Life In Elastic, It’s Fantastic

“No buttons, no zippers”: This is the promise that greets online shoppers browsing Leset’s selection of pants. Fixed fastenings need not apply; only accommodating, flexible drawstrings and elastic waistbands will grace your soft, sensitive stomach.

The pants come in cotton twill and pointelle, satin and silk blends, bold colors and neutrals — the closest thing you’ll find to a pattern is a classic stripe. They are simple, they retail mostly between $120 and $380, and women can’t get enough. “I love that their material and cuts are so chic, you don’t even notice that it's a casual, elasticized waist. It’s my life hack,” says Amrit Tietz, DJ and co-founder of Spread The Jelly. She discovered Leset’s pants during her pregnancy. “I got so accustomed to comfort, I couldn’t go back to anything else.”

Something similar happened to a wide swathe of women during the pandemic, when athleisure became a work-from-home uniform and the phrase “hard pants” became a pejorative. “Suddenly, the idea of ‘real clothes’ included elastic waistbands, soft fabrics, and pieces that moved with you,” says Lili Chemla, the designer and founder of Leset. “Women realized they didn’t have to sacrifice being comfortable to feel put together.”

When Chemla launched her line in 2019, athleisure was ascendant — the Outdoor Voices exercise dress was the height of errand-running style, and every other woman at Target was sporting a matching Alo Yoga set — but still cordoned off from daywear. There was a gap in the market for clothes that were “polished in look, relaxed in feel,” she says. “Department stores didn’t know where to put us in the early days.”

Now, the industry’s caught up with her in a big way, and while Leset may still be the brand of choice for New York’s it girl set, it’s no longer in a category of its own. It’s not that soft pants are a new invention; elastic waistbands have been around for nearly a century, and we’ve had drawstrings for time immemorial. But post-pandemic, those discourse magnets known as leggings have fallen by the wayside (down 24% between 2020 and 2023, per Edited) in favor of these more polished-looking, but equally easy-to-wear alternatives. In 2022, only 6.2% of bottoms produced were trousers vs. 12.2% in 2025, a gain partly fueled by a surge in bloomers, tracksuit pants, “pajama pants,” and boxers, all of which feature drawstrings or elastic.

Just think about the brands and products that’ve been all the rage in recent years: High Sport launched in 2021 and its luxe, stretchy knit pants became a status symbol shortly thereafter, launching a thousand dupes. (The founder’s alma mater, The Row, released its own elastic-waisted pants in 2023: The Gala Pants, which retail for over $1,000.) Indie brands like Brooke Callahan and Gil Rodriguez released drawstring-dependent designs beloved by the Instagram set. Mall retailers embraced the trend, too, stocking racks with “easy pants” and “pull-on pants” in endless variations, alongside reinterpretations of track pants and pajama pants. Yes, there are forebears — in decades past, brands like Issey Miyake’s Pleats Please and Eileen Fisher have merged ease and elastic with elegance, while others, like Comme des Garçons, offered more eccentric takes on the stretchy waistband — but in short: we’re witnessing a golden age of soft pants, a Cambrian explosion of waistline comfort.

“I used to be a skirts and dresses-only kind of girl, and then all of a sudden there were all of these cute pants with elastic waistbands and drawstrings, and I was like, ‘I guess I can own pants,’” says Lauren Page Goldstein, a 29-year-old marketing consultant in New York. Her pair of choice is J.Crew’s Soleil pant in linen, which comes in petite and tall variations, as well as sizes ranging from XXXS to 3X; Goldstein owns three pairs, and frequently recommends them to friends. “They just kind of feel like they’re made for everybody,” she says.

The pandemic wasn’t the only factor in this shift. Though the arc of American fashion is long, it bends toward comfort: Since the late 1800s, when women started engaging in recreational activities, designers have been pressed to innovate in the realm of athletic wear; after a while, the developments in the more comfortable, easy-to-wear athletic clothing become acceptable as daywear — that’s why it’s often called sportswear even if you’re not Doing Sports. Things have begun to move in the other direction as well, as streetwear brands that began with sweatpants and T-shirts begin making more elevated pieces, while preserving ease and flexibility.

A reevaluation of diet culture has also changed our definitions of “real” clothes. Avery Trufelman, host of the fashion history podcast Articles of Interest, recalls the attitudes of the not-too-distant past, as captured by old episodes of What Not to Wear. “Stacy and Clinton are like, ‘You need to wear hard pants, because that’s when you'll know you’re gaining weight,’” Trufelman says. “In a more charitable light, you can say it’s body acceptance, we don’t live like that anymore. Or in a less charitable light, you could say, well now you can just take Ozempic and you don’t need to use your clothes as a body monitor. But that job that clothes had to do is a bit anachronistic. Hard pants are not some kind of measure of virtue in the way they were in the early aughts.”

The last and perhaps the most revolutionary trend: a growing recognition of the flaws inherent in off-the-rack sizing. Los Angeles-based apparel manufacturer John Lee, whose family-owned factory Jinpum works with brands like Fear of God and Cherry LA, knows well the flaws inherent in the system. The first step is identifying a “fit model” — someone with the brand’s ideal proportions, around whose body the One True Base Size is developed. There are professional fit models, but they needn’t be pros. “We’ve also come across the brand owners being the base size model,” Lee says.

Though the arc of American fashion is long, it bends toward comfort.

Then, all other sizes are “graded” off of the One True Base Size by adding or subtracting arbitrary, set measurements. Often, this results in some sizes not reflecting the original intention of the design — that it should fit a little oversized, or shrunken, for example. The problem is compounded further for mid- and plus-size patterns. “The only real perfect fit that is ever made,” Lee says, “is actually the base size for someone who has a relatively similar body in every way to the base size fit model.” The actual manufacturing, during which a garment goes through a minimum of four to as many as 15 different processes, likely handled by as many different people, also means “there will be variance even amongst the same size of the same style from the same brand in the same store.” (Perhaps for these reasons, the utopian possibilities of elastic waistbands aren’t for everyone; as one friend of mine shared, “When the elastic cinches in the waist, it bags out other places … it makes my abdomen look like there’s a bubble right where my stomach is.”)

The only way to really guarantee a garment fits well is to make something bespoke, which is, by definition, impossible to do at scale — and, even when done properly, requires the body to maintain its exact same shape for the whole of the garment’s usable life. If we’re talking about quality clothes that last years and years, that’s just not realistic. Bodies gain and lose weight. They get pregnant. They get bloated. They change and change again.

Take it from Estelle Tang, The Guardian’s lifestyle and wellness editor, who’s been on team flexible pants longer than most. “I’m short, so if my weight fluctuates that can make jeans and dress pants very unfriendly. Elastic-waist pants mean I don’t have to worry about changing up my whole wardrobe,” she says. “I also have chronic pain, so basically all my pants are loose and flexible — jeans or leggings can be painful and difficult to put on. Also, online shopping is so hit or miss; measurements aren’t always available. I hate returning things, and I know elastic-waist pants will usually fit.”

Long ago, Western styles of dress used to be much looser and more accommodating: Pre-Renaissance, sack-like tunics and dresses were layered atop one another and cinched with belts, or left loose. (If dressing like a Weird Medieval Guy is actually your vibe, the good people of Black Crane and Baserange can help.) It is a funny coincidence of history that, just when technological advances made mass-produced fashion possible, Western tastes embraced and became extremely dependent on the craft of tailoring, requiring each bolt of fabric to hit the body just so. Clothes got fitted, and stiff, and uncomfy.

It took generations of women like Chemla designing for themselves, for the comfort and simplicity they craved, to wind up back at loose and accommodating. There’s never been more choice in the market, and there’s even more on the horizon. “What we’re able to do with stretch, and how we’re able to incorporate stretch with luxury material is fairly new and cutting-edge. I feel like from a fiber level, we weren’t able to do some of this stuff even 10 years ago,” Trufelman, the podcast host, says. “[Designers are] wanting to experiment with cottons and linens, like, ‘Oh, how can we integrate natural materials and make them stretchy and comfortable?’”

Sportswear designer Giorgio di Sant’Angelo said it best in 1987: “[Stretch] always has connotations for a future that’s positive and expanding. You can’t stretch and be narrow-minded.”