This Father's Day, Embrace Your Inner Dad Jean
When my wife was pregnant with our son, I called a good friend to share the news. His first response was, word-for-word, “R.I.P. your life.”
He’s since apologized, but it’s not an uncommon sentiment. People tell you that being a dad reduces your world. That you’ll be forced into the hellscape of colorful plastic and baby shark and mac-and-cheese, never to return to the world of boutique hotels and cashmere sweaters.
I’m now a grizzled, veteran dad. Certified times three, with a full court press of a five-year-old, three-year-old, and six-month-old at home. It’s more diapers and less whiskey these days. But I can say this about all those folks who gave bad, and unsolicited, advice: They’re dead wrong. Being a dad doesn’t reduce your world, it opens it up.
Does it change your lifestyle and affect your decisions? Of course. Do you have to build your whole schedule and lifestyle around a creature that doesn't have a fully developed frontal cortex? Of course not. But these little crumb monsters become a lens and a lodestone for your most important decisions. I’m reluctant to tell you that the clichés are all true. It changes your life for the better.
My life looks different from the pre-kid era. Our house is strewn with half-capped markers and Raffi songs play from Bluetooth speakers. My kids are crazy for asparagus, but don’t like pepper on their eggs. We don’t force it. Some days are hard. Some days are wonderful. Most days are both.
Our world didn’t shrink, it got bigger. And so did my pants.
For much of my adult life, I was fervently devoted to what can generously be called a slim-cut pant. Enough so that my wife’s family, in a wedding rehearsal song parodying the Brady Bunch theme, included the lyrical dig “tight tight pants.” My brother-in-law sang it in a falsetto. You get the point.
I fervently believed this would never change. Then, slowly but surely, my pants got a little bigger. Part of this is due to a large, wide-legged pants style revolution, but I think I just lucked out on timing. My descent (or ascent) into the classic dad jean silhouette coincided with the cultural zeitgeist.
For dads, bigger pants are natural evolution. Abs and ultramarathons are for when your kids are out of diapers. When you have a newborn, if you’re not putting on a little weight, you’re probably not carrying your weight. And denim just makes sense. Sure we’re not the original prospector clientele, but have you ever seen a three-year old at a playground?
Francis Ford Coppola on set of Apocalypse Now is your North Star Here.
In architecture, the question of whether function dictates form or form dictates function is a dividing line. I tend towards the wisdom of the father of the skyscraper, Louis Sullivan’s quote: “It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human, and all things super-human, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law."
This law is sartorial as well, and there’s no better case study than my reluctant conversion to dad jeans.
My general principles of a dad jean are as follows: the cut should be generous enough that you can move in it and the wash should lean light. I'd argue the biggest dad jean flex is buying a genuine unwashed selvedge pair and fading them yourself into dad denim glory. Like buying your kid a birth-year watch or laying down a nice bottle of wine to celebrate their future 21st, there's beauty in a ritual that marks the passage of time. But onto the rules.
My first rule of dad jeans is don’t trust the model photos. They are all size 28 with sticks for legs. I’d say the best case is to try the pairs on IRL, but I know from personal experience dads are balancing midnight wakeups and soccer practice schedules. We're not going to stores, we're scrolling through e-commerce sites, bleary-eyed, at 11:49 PM.
Which leads to my second rule of dad jeans: go up a size. Having a toddler is basically an extended, dynamic kettlebell workout. You need room to move. My preferred pair of dad jeans is an Imogene + Willie cut I found on eBay for $37. They’re at least a size too big, and someone hemmed them to a (much too short for me) 28” inseam. In other words, they’re perfect. If nothing else, jumping up a size is an excuse to wear a good belt. I’ve been partial to this luxury-leaning crocodile belt from w.kleinberg lately. No cell phone clip on it yet, I’m not that far gone.
The third rule sounds counterintuitive, but bear with me: take price out of the equation. Denim is tough. It’s the whole reason it exists. Kids are going to spill things. It’s the whole reason they exist. Or, at least, their default setting for the first several years of life.
My advice: buy a pair that you want to wear every day and beat them up. The big three are obvious contenders: Levi's 505, Wrangler Cowboy Cut, Lee’s Legendary. But don’t be afraid to go a little fancier.
Esquire swears by Buck Masons’ Full Saddle Denim. I’ve got a pair in black, not quite the official dad jean color choice, but the exception proves the rule. Octobre Édition’s Wrigley is near-perfect mid-range blue, with a medium wash and a high rise, and a name that delights my inner Cubs fan. This pair from Frame replaced my beloved old ripped Wranglers, which unfortunately split up the crotch while chopping firewood. And I have the delightfully named “Slacker” Jeans from LA-based AYR on order as a little Father’s Day treat.
That's the thesis of this third rule. Don't be afraid to invest in a pair that fits like an old handshake, reach for them day-after-day, year-after-year, and you'll save money in the long run.
Which brings us to the final point, the uniform. In cooking, béchamel is known as a “mother sauce.” Delicious on its own, yet the base for endless permutations. Forgive me the dad-ism, but good jeans are the equivalent for us dads navigating a post-kid style identity. Great on their own, excellent when paired with the right ingredients.
Serge Gainsbourg, a classic denim wearer, doesn’t have the dad jean form we think of, but the function is certainly there. Find your own interpretation of the uniform.
My dad jeans are the basis for a little bit of dad uniform experimentation, trying on different versions of what fatherhood looks like on me. There are the canonical New Balances, or, as I’ve preferred lately, the Japanese-based Flower Mountain suede sneaks. When I took my infant daughter to our local coffee shop and paired my dad denim with this Dandy del Mar crocheted cardigan and a trucker hat, a stranger told me they could tell I was a "chill dad." Not sure if that's true, but I'll take any positive parenting reinforcement I can get. I've found that dad jeans pair well with the garden clog wave. Slip-on shoes that hose off from potty training accidents are prized possessions. My dad jeans are also wide-legged enough to fit over a good pair of cowboy boots and look natural with a worn-in pearl snap or denim jacket. And, I leave them on for post-dad duty too. Thrown on with a knit polo and a blazer, dad jeans do a world of wonders for the spontaneous, post-bedtime date night.
At the end of the day, I remind myself that my kids are precious, my clothes are not. I wear my denim, stain my denim, wash it, and repeat. The days of fine tailoring will come again soon, when my five-year-old is old enough to buy his first suit. The days of skinny jeans? Hopefully those are gone for good.
esquire
