“How to take measurements for men’s trousers” starts by lying to you. Before you even get your tape measure out, it refers to trousers as if they have one singular set of measurements; waist, inseam, job done. Except they don’t. Not really. Taking measurements for trousers is two separate jobs wearing the same label. There’s measuring yourself, which is a one off endeavour.
Do it once properly and you’ll never trust a size chart ever again for the rest of your life.
Then there’s measuring the trousers themselves, which no one ever explains properly because it’s less sexy and requires you to accept the brand’s own measurements might be bullshit.
Conflate those two steps and you end up like I did for about six years; trusting the label because the label seemed to know numbers and assumed that equated to honesty.
Measuring yourself, and why the waistband lies to you first
Your waist measurement is the one everyone gets wrong, and also the one society is actively against you getting right. Ever since your first pair of trousers came with a till receipt telling you your jeans are a size 10 (they weren’t), you’ve been conditioned to think that your waist size is one specific number assigned to you by the high street, rather than your actual measurement. Brands vanity size, cut generously or tight as fuck all depending on who’s making your trousers and sometimes they just make shit up. I measured myself properly for the first time when I was thirty one. Took a tape measure and measured my waist where it actually wanted to be measured; the narrowest part of my torso, not where my jeans just happen to sit. The number I came up with was two inches smaller than I’d been buying since… twenty something? Two inches. For a decade I’d been walking round in trousers supported only by disbelief.
The inseam is the measurement people rush, and it’s also the one that ruins trousers more than any other if you get it wrong. A wonky waist just makes them uncomfortable, but an incorrect inseam means you either look like you’ve shrunk or you’ve borrowed your brother’s jeans. How you measure it is by measuring a pair you know fits you well, flat, from the crotch seam down to the hem. Not whilst your legs are doing some bizarre impersonation of a cyclist’s legs in underwear adverts. I once tried measuring myself standing up in a desperate attempt to hurry the process along whilst clothes shopping. Ended up in a changing room, tape measure ummed and ahhed at midway down my leg with an increasingly concerned member of staff looking on wondering if she should come in and stage a coup. The number I got to was, if we’re being honest, made up.
Then there’s rise. Rise is the thing that almost nobody measures but which is so very wrong on most men’s trousers. Low rise, high rise, mid. Actually it doesn’t matter what cut you prefer, it’s still a measurement. Front crotch seam to waistband. How high your rise sits decides whether your trousers actually stay up where you think they’re staying up, or whether you’ve got that constant, self conscious tug going on all day that you keep telling yourself nobody can see. My brother hates his body’s disproportionate allocation of torso to leg and buys high rise jeans and trousers because he can’t see his knees. Refuses to accept his rise is mid despite the constant_State_Of_MidCollected_by_Never_. As a result, his tops never stay tucked and he has no idea why. That’s not the trousers. That’s the rise. He knows it’s the rise. He will not accept it’s the rise.
Measuring the trousers themselves, and the point where society lets you down
This is the part where I get angry. Not sarcastically threw-my-phone-across-the-room angry, actually angry. You take the time to measure yourself correctly once, then it stands to reason that finding a matching pair of trousers on a website should be easy. It’s not. Because whilst “waist 32” might be what the label on your trousers says, and “waist 32” measured from flat edge to flat edge and doubled by yours truly at home should be the same thing, they’re not. Regularly not the same number from the same brand, in the same fit of trousers, sometimes even from the same website but in different colour ways. How that’s possible is anyone’s guess, but until someone in the industry wants to provide me with an actual reason that doesn’t involve needing to stocksize at different intervals depending on fabric type, I’m angry. I bought two identical pairs of chinos, from Asos. Same size. Same cut. Same. everything. But one was waterproofly, infuriatingly baggier around the waist than the other despite being supposedly the exact same trousers. An entire FUCKING INCH difference on THE SAME TROUSER. I want to know whose quality control job is it that HAS to verify that yes, those two separate pairs of trousers we sold you are different sizes? Because that’s not them fitting differently, that’s them being measured differently and they’ve made that your problem when it should be theirs.
Ever since I discovered that news for myself I refuse to trust the number on the label and measure everything myself. I lay the trousers themselves out flat on the ground, buttons done up, measure the waistband edge to edge, double that number. Measure the inseam from crotch seam to hem. Measure the leg opening if I care about how jeans taper through the leg because I sort of do because I have very strong opinions on flap-y ankles. Takes all of ninety seconds. It will not make your shopping trip go quickly, but it’s also saved me more returns than any size guide on the internet has ever managed to, and I’ve been buying trousers since I was old enough to pull them up myself so there’s kinda no excuse for how long it took me to figure that out.
One other thing no one mentions is that fabric makes all of those numbers you just spent a minute poring over completely different. Same measurements on a stiff cotton as you find on a stretch twill blend will fit you differently because one has stretch and one does not. Take the measurements as guidelines, not gospel. Sweatpants with exactly the same measurements as your everyday chinos will feel tighter around your waist after thirty seconds of putting them on because they’re made from fabric with zero give.
No brand is printing that on the label for you.
You just kind of have to know, or learn the hard way, trapped in your own office desperately trying and failing to redistribute your own circulation with your trouser legs like some kind of towel monster nightmare nobody asked for.
“How do you measure men’s trousers” isn’t any of the measurements above, it’s knowing which measurements are yours and which belong to the garment. Beyond that, question every brand that tries to make you think those two magically line up every time. Measure yourself once. Measure the trousers like you mean it every goddamn time because no label is going to get it right for you 100% of the time. They’ve lied to too many people as it is for you to trust that fourth number. It takes longer. It’s nowhere near as fun as tossing a size 32 into your shopping basket and calling it a day. It has however led me to a point where I haven’t returned anything in months and for me that’s basically evolving into a better person.
