Nickelson Wooster, fashion consultant and sought-after subject of street style photographers, is known, among other things, for his taste in shorts. He wears them long And short, loose fitting And narrowin leather, wool and twill.
“Shorts are like skirts, and I think any woman will tell you that there is no one length or shape that suits everyone,” says Mr Wooster, 63, who goes by Nick.
At first glance it may seem as if short films suffer from a case of nominative determinism; their name tries to tell us what to expect from their appearance. In practice, the length of shorts can vary enormously. They can reach the top of the shins or stop a few inches from the hip.
Ross Figlerski, 32, recently started leaning into shortened inseams. “I’m a bigger man, and I find them much more flattering and reliable for whatever outfit I’m wearing,” says Mr. Figlerski, who lives in Brooklyn.
His fiancée also influenced his thinking about shorts. “She demanded to see more thighs,” he said.
Inseam trends move up and down like an accordion. In the 1950s, flared, foot-length Bermuda shorts washed up on American shores. From then on, the shorts shrank until they evolved into the Dolfin shorts, the ubiquitous little cotton athletic shorts worn by Richard Simmons and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980s. Inside seams had nowhere to go but down.
The 1990s and 2000s were dominated by denim, cargo and basketball shorts, all worn long and baggy. Look no further than ‘N Sync, basketball player Allen Iverson or the outfits in films like ‘Clueless” and “Can’t hardly wait.”
The recent short-shorts trend seemed to start around the time the hashtag #5inchseam started circulating on TikTok in 2020. Suddenly the social media platform was filled with people clamoring for more men to show some little leg. (“5 inch shorts are the male version of cleavage,” reads the caption on a video with more than 30,000 likes.)
Since then, so-called thirst trap shorts have become a more widely popular summer item for men, with some of the more adventurous choosing running shorts with side slits that leave little to the imagination.
The designer Willie Norris said she was interested in “why the short inseam is so strong in straight men.” Gay men, MX. Norris added that they have long chosen their inseam without the same kind of heated debate: “This kind of gritty sartorial attitude is something I see straight men participating in much more than gay men.”
“These shorter inseams have kind of entered the mainstream in the last few years,” says James Harris of the men’s podcast “Throwing Fits,” where he and his co-host, Lawrence Schlossman, regularly ridicule the discourse on what constitutes a garment . fashionable inseam.
Mr Harris suggested that 15cm inseams had become more widespread, partly as a result of young women swooning over them on social media. For his part, he prefers 7.5 cm or 9 cm inside seams.
“The longer inseams are familiar to me growing up in the 90s and 2000s,” Mr. Harris said. “It fits with the wider silhouette we see in menswear in general.”
Nostalgia isn’t the only thing driving the inseam choice. Liam Burack, a 15-year-old sophomore from Johnstown, Colorado, says “pretty short” shorts have become popular among his friends since the pandemic, largely for practical reasons.
“Short shorts are more comfortable for me,” he said. “Longer ones are just too heavy and baggy.”
However, there are signs that the hems of shorts are slowly being pulled back to the ground. New collections from Louis Vuitton and Lemaire shown at the men’s fashion shows in Paris last month featured inseams that extended beyond the kneecap.
Mel Ottenberg, a stylist and editor-in-chief of Interview magazine, said he “loves mass-market shorts” but was happy to see “longer, conservative and boring shorts again.”
“Apparently my taste in dad shorts is very trendy,” he added.
Mr Wooster attributed the appearance of longer shorts at recent catwalk shows to the tendency of fashion brands to go against the grain once a trend reaches the mass market. “Once the pendulum swings one way, I feel like the natural reaction is for things to change in that rarefied atmosphere,” he said. “The real trendsetters end up going in the opposite direction, just because.”
Some designers don’t think much about which way the wind is blowing. Daiki Suzuki, founder of the Engineered Garments brand, was a bit surprised when he heard about the changing style in short lengths. Mr. Suzuki, whose label specializes in adventurous and coveted interpretations of the Ivy style and American workwear, said he typically sticks to inseams between 9 and 11 inches when designing a new pair.
“I consider shorts as a separate item,” he said. “Just like women choose between pants and skirts, I approach shorts as a separate category. While length is crucial, so is the width of the leg opening and the thickness of the shorts. I don’t think much about trends.”
But even though certain trends seem to dominate, there seems to be variation among every possible social group.
Zach Pollakoff, 39, recalled that as a student it seemed like a “big statement” when someone wore super short shorts. “It was like, OK, he’s not a student, he’s not an academic. That’s an indie music guy.’
But in recent years, he says, it has become more difficult to use clothing as a shortcut to understanding someone’s taste in music, for example. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“The rules about things like inseams have become a moving target,” Pollakoff said. “And it makes it irrelevant to have a rule in the first place.”
Mr. Harris, the co-host of “Throwing Fits,” said this was indicative of the general direction of menswear these days. “Everyone does everything,” he said.
While people seek style inspiration from a range of newsletters, social media influencers, glossy magazines and other cultural authorities, there is no universal idea of what is right or wrong to wear.
“There is not one dominant market; there is no one dominant archetype,” Mr. Harris said.
But for the guys who might still be on the fence about how much leg to show this summer, Mr. Wooster had some fashion advice.
“I wear a length that hits right at the knee,” he said. “Not below or above – right on the knee. I feel like that’s foolproof. It will never be bad. That is the Teflon length.”
