A Letter From a Reader: The Easy Trousers (Elaine)
For forty years I quietly undid my top button under the table after lunch. I thought elastic-waist trousers meant giving up.
Six things the Easy Straight-Leg Trousers get right that forty years of zips and buttons got wrong, written down by a customer, not a shop.
Elaine · Customer · Hervey Bay, Queensland · 5 min read
Every pair of trousers I have owned for forty years has had a zip and a button, and every one of them has started to dig in by about two o’clock. I am 62, I live in Hervey Bay, and I had a firm belief that the alternative, an elastic waist, was for the garden or for giving up. Elastic meant track pants, or the shapeless pull-on trousers you see in the back pages of catalogues. So I put up with the button, and I quietly undid it under the table after every long lunch.
Then, in September, I helped out at the spring fete at my granddaughter’s school in Pialba. The woman running the cake stall next to mine was about my age, in a pair of fine blue-and-white striped trousers with a plain white tee and white trainers, and she was on her feet from eight until two, bending to the boxes under the trestle, carrying trays, and sitting down on a milk crate for a cup of tea. She looked neat the whole day, and she never once tugged at her waistband. By the afternoon I was the one tugging at mine.
Her name is Sue, she has run that cake stall every year since her own children were at the school, and she told me her trousers were the Victoria, from the Easy Straight-Leg Trousers collection at Portsea Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I ordered a pair that evening, fully expecting to send them back. I did not, and I wrote to the boutique to tell them why, and they asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read. So here it is, the six things they get right.
Trousers for a woman my age, if you have looked lately, come in two piles. One pile is tailored, with a zip and a button that are fine standing up and miserable after a meal. The other is the elastic-waist pile, which is comfortable and looks like pyjamas. Smart, or comfortable. I had given up choosing between them, and Sue at the cake stall was the proof that I did not have to. A month later I wore my own pair up the main street in Berrima, and three women asked me where they were from.
The Brooke, the ring print, ready on the wardrobe door with a white tee and the straw hat.
An elastic waist that lasts through a long lunch
This is the thing I would tell you if I only had a minute. These have a high waist with an elasticated waistband. It sits at your natural waist and it moves with you, and the listing says they stay comfortable from breakfast right through to dinner. I can tell you that is true. Peter and I were down in Sydney for a week in October, and on the Thursday we hired a car and drove down to Berrima for the day, a little old village in the Southern Highlands with sandstone and timber shopfronts along a main street that goes up a gentle hill. We had a long lunch at the pub at the top, soup, the roast and a sticky date pudding, and I did not have to undo a single thing. I stood up from that lunch exactly as comfortable as I sat down.
“I don't have to unbutton anything after lunch. That tells you everything.”
— Jenny K. · Brisbane, QLDA straight leg that skims rather than clings
The fit is relaxed, with a straight leg that the listing says skims rather than clings, and that is the whole trick. It does not cling to the thigh and it does not flap about like pyjamas either, which is why they look smart enough for a day out and easy enough for the garden. Elastic at the waist was never my worry on its own. My worry was that the rest of the trouser would look as though it had given up too. It does not. From the waistband down they fall straight and neat, the same as a good tailored pair, and nothing pulls across the knees when you sit.
The Penelope in the blue stripe up close: the elastic waist, the pocket and the fine weave.
“The straight cut falls nicely without clinging to me.”
— Heather L. · Warrnambool, VICLight and breathable for a warm day on your feet
The listing calls them breathable trousers, light and airy, and that is how they wear. It was a warm spring day in Berrima, and we must have walked up and down that main street three times, stopping at every shop the way you do, and I was comfortable the whole way. Walking up the hill, nothing pulled and nothing rode up. At home in Hervey Bay, where it is warm most of the year, they have taken over from my shorts on the morning walk with Teddy, and I wear them in the garden in the afternoons when the sun is still on the back of the house.
Halfway up the main street in Berrima, in the blue stripe. Peter took this one.
“The lightweight fabric works well on hot afternoons.”
— Valerie J. · Townsville, QLDTwo proper pockets, and no trip to the alterations shop
There are two side pockets, and the listing is right that they keep the shape neat even with something in them. In Berrima my phone went in one and my lip balm and the car park ticket in the other, so my little straw bag was only for my purse. When you are browsing old shops with both hands, that matters. The other thing I noticed, as a woman who has had nearly every pair of trousers she owns taken up, is that I wore these straight out of the bag with my flat white trainers. It is still worth checking the sizing on the product page before you order.
The Brooke, folded on the kitchen table the morning after it came. Light enough to fold down to almost nothing.
“The length suited me straight away, so I didn't need to take them up.”
— Marilyn N. · Albany, WATwenty pairs, one easy cut, so the second order is no gamble
There are twenty pairs in the collection, all the same easy cut, in sizes S to 3XL. Once I knew the fit, ordering another pair was no gamble at all. When we got home from Sydney I ordered four more: the Brooke in the ring print, the Penelope in the blue stripe, and two that are going to my sister in Bundaberg, who saw the Berrima photos and rang me that same night. My plain navy and black trousers with the buttons have gone to the op shop, and I have not missed them once.
“My first order was one pair. I've now got three.”
— Lynne A. · Tamworth, NSWPrints people actually ask about
Plain trousers are sensible, and nobody has ever stopped me in the street about a sensible pair. In Berrima, outside the bookshop, a woman about my age asked where my trousers were from. Further up, outside a little antiques place, another asked the very same thing, and her friend wrote it down on the back of a receipt. Then the woman at the next table in the pub leaned over and asked as well. The Victoria comes in fine stripes in six colours: blue, pink, lilac, light grey, black and mint green. The Penelope is a fine blue stripe, the Brooke is cream with a black and brown ring print, and the Lauren is a lilac floral. With a white tee and white trainers, every one of them looks like you made an effort, when really you just pulled on a pair of trousers.
“My daughter wanted to know where I'd bought them.”
— Jan E. · Adelaide, SAThese trousers, against the zips and buttons I had been buying
You can buy trousers anywhere. I know, because I have owned most of them, and given the rest to the op shop. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
A zip and a button that dig in by two o'clock
Tight on the thigh or baggy everywhere
No pockets, or ones too shallow to use
Too warm by the afternoon
Navy, black or beige, and nobody asks
A high, elasticated waist, comfortable all day
A relaxed straight leg that skims
Two side pockets for phone and keys
A light, breathable feel
Stripes and prints, asked about three times in one day
About the price
I will be straightforward about the price, because it was the thing that made me suspicious. The Victoria, the stripe I wore up the hill, is A$62.95, and it was A$251.95. The Penelope and the Brooke are A$60.95, down from A$243.95, and the collection starts at A$58.95, down from A$235.95.
The boutique says the sale is about clearing the season’s stock, selling directly, with no middleman taking a cut. That is their arithmetic, not mine. What I can tell you is that I have paid more than that for one pair of trousers I had to undo after lunch.
If you have spent forty years quietly undoing the button under the table after lunch, this is the pair I would hand you instead.
— Elaine
The Easy Straight-Leg Trousers Collection
- Victoria: fine stripes in six colours, A$62.95
- Penelope blue stripe and Brooke ring print, A$60.95
- High waist with an elasticated waistband
- Relaxed straight leg that skims rather than clings
- Two side pockets and a breathable feel
- Twenty pairs, sizes S to 3XL, free delivery across Australia
Spring sale on now. The middle sizes are already going.