This is a post from 2019 and I’m still the same way. I buy the same pants/capris/crops I did then (thankfully they haven’t been discontinued). I was “ruined” by the comfort of “activewear” which is a term they use locally. They no longer call them yoga pants because many of us who wear them do not do yoga. I have two pair of dress pants hanging in my closet and I can’t remember the last time I wore them. You can dress up activewear for most any occasion.

Styles go in and out and my idea of comfort does too. I don’t like snug, pinching or pants up my butt.

Twenty years ago I thought an elastic waist would be comfortable. It was, but it puffed out and gave the appearance of an umbrella coming out of my stomach. I trashed that style.

I kept my eye out because stretch is good. I was still wearing jeans and pants with fly zippers and snaps. Bending over made it cut or pinch. All that fabric at my waist was bulky and sometimes annoying. I wore larger pants to go out for dinner (burp!).

Manufacturers started to incorporate stretch in jeans. All good but still lots of fabric at my waist. They needed to do away with the zipper. (I won’t even go into when they lowered the waist to just above the pubic hair line and included a two inch zipper. Yikes. That was the pits!)

Then came the big yoga movement. The clothing went mainstream. Women wore it for everything. Women who didn’t do yoga (and had no intention of ever doing yoga) had a closet full of yoga pants.

I didn’t like the concept of “compression.” That means snug. Girdle tight. Nope, not me. Those manufacturers aren’t dumb. There are a lot of women like me. They like the easy fit waist with a close (but not tight) fit. (Oh yes, they priced them out of this world. Cha-ching, cha-ching!)

I was willing to pay if it was truly comfortable. Something multi-functional. I could wear it to do just about anything. Dress it up. Dress it down. Wear to dinner! I tried them. Winner, winner!

My jeans wardrobe didn’t go away. I have stretch jeans I love (with zippers) but I especially love my active clothes. (That’s what they call them now.) In the hot summer they are cooler. The fit is easier. The only problem was that you could only get them in black.

That’s changed too. Now you can get in many colors or multi-colored.

Yesterday I did some heavy duty cleaning. I had old jean shorts on. I couldn’t wait to take them off and go back to my “active” pants.

I’ve worn some crazy stuff over the years. Bell bottoms that sat under my belly and were so wide I could sweep the streets. Jeans that you lay down to zip up. Stovepipe pant legs that look like elephant legs. All gone by the wayside along with the football shoulder pads.

The pants I bought this spring are called hiking pants/crops/capris. Very thin and cool with a stretchy waist but the fabric doesn’t stretch. It doesn’t matter because they drape well. It’s like wearing nothing. Love them. Perfect for a hot day but not for cold weather. I could do yoga in them. Hmmm…have yoga pants gone out?