The trick is that they needn’t be fancy – a simple pair will often look best
Trousers in the evening is such a good look. Think of that 1975 Helmut Newton shot of an Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking in a backlit Paris street. The woman is wearing a tuxedo and tailored trousers with a buttoned-up white shirt, and she’s as sexy as any of his nudes, to my mind. If I walk into a cocktail party and among all the women in dresses there’s one in trousers, she’s the one I want to meet.
Tricky, though, I find. I love trousers-for-evening in theory, but in reality (on me) not so much. But do you know what? I think I’ve finally realised where I’ve been going wrong. Here’s the thing: the concept of trousers as eveningwear suggests the trousers should be in some way fancy, but trousers that look nice on real women tend to be quite the opposite. A gold leather paperbag-waist pair look great on Gigi Hadid. Ditto high-waisted latex leggings. Ditto jewel-coloured palazzo pants. Which is great, fine, good for her. But when I try on any that are elaborate – even a bright colour, or an embellished waistband – I look in the mirror and, it’s not necessarily that I hate how it looks, just that I feel a bit self-conscious, and suddenly a dress seems as if it might be the answer after all.
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