Back to Black

Elegantly slim, full or cropped – the classic trouser makes a welcome return

Black trousers. So eh-legantly swellegant, no? So skippety-chic, like Audrey Hepburn. So liquorice-legged and sexy on Freja Beha Erichsen. And yet so often like a magician’s assistant, or a waiter, if worn without due caution. Maybe it’s because black trousers are so easy to get wrong – too shiny, too flimsy, too power-dressy – that we have cuh-lung so tightly to our jeans. Get the fah-bric, form or fall wrong and you fast resemble the other half of a cabaret act. There are too many things to consider.

But consider we must, because not since the last 90′s heyday of Helmut Lang have black trousers enjoyed such popularity. Back then, people were forced to stalk the school section of John Lewis in search of similarly masculine hip-slung slacks, so rare were they. Now, at least, the options are plentiful. They were simple and boyish, with leather inserts and gently tapered legs at Celine; at Jil Sander they were ski-inspired and stirruped; Yves Saint Laurent provided svelte floor-sweepers; Tom Ford sabre-sharp silk satin flares; and, at Louis Vuitton, laser-cut leather jodhpurs led the charge for fetish chic.

My own black trouser odyssey began in the spring. This winter, the trouser has been revisited in a flat-fronted schoolboy style, matt as a blackboard and as reassuringly simple. I’m cuh-rently lusting after the deliciously androgynous versions that featured on Karl Lagerfield’s post-apocalyptic catwalk at Chanel. Worn with an oversized blazer or big knit and heavy boots, such roughed-up elegance feels very Jules et Jim.

At night I will channel a more minimal statement in slim Gerard Darel, with a tuxedo stripe, barely grazing the ankle – guh-loriously simple and sub-buh-limely comfortable.

I may nawt be able to produce a rabbit from a hat, but a failsafe black trouser solution? Now, that is ahb-viously mah-gic.

Alicia Rivera. ♥

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