A Short History
By Jeff Lund
@alaskalund
Gone are the days of the cotton t-shirt and scratchy, unforgiving pants and shorts.
They might still be out there, but we no longer have to tolerate the awkward fits and the discomfort.
***NOTE: However, modern clothing technology couldn’t have saved Danny from blowing out this pants during a rigorous dance routine, (detailed in Episode 66 of GSC) and sure as hell nothing could have saved this jacket from Tommy Boy. By the way, I have searched high and low for the video of Danny’s squatter ass escaping confinement, but it’s buried somewhere beneath half a decade of internet debris.***
Anyway, finding pants and shorts that fit can be difficult, especially for women. Athletic apparel in general for women has changed drastically. There is some obviousness to this problem because everyone is shaped differently. Even between two individuals of the same height and roughly the same weight can carry that weight differently.
Athletic builds and lifestyles chased many men away from jeans period and only the recent addition of form fits have brought some back for limited use.
What kind of jeans should men buy? Whether it’s the athletic look or for fashion there are plenty of possibilities.
Shorts are another quandary. Stylistically it seems we are closer to the old 1982 Bike Coaching short days than we are the Fab 5 when it comes to the athletic lifestyle. While it might be a surprise that the banners are down at Michigan, it’s pretty easy to find people who can easily recall the lingering impact on the athletic short game. Ironically, the baggy shorts of the Fab 5, ended up being much shorter than the double down (literally) that came in the late 90s and early 2000s. Allen Iverson had some really baggy shorts, and really good words about practice. Then the trend reversed. Mobility, durability and efficiency of movement became king and the shift was to short because, as Jorge Castillo writes, “bigger got too big.”
Shop the Caffeine and Kilos Panther Performance Short Now
So, in the gym, one wanted a good short to lift in, then maybe head into the gym for some basketball. If things went wrong shot-wise, well, you could just blame arm day.