random thoughts – Day 2,135 (Tuesday) – polyester pants

My favorite pants for the past few weeks have been my Vera Wang mini bootcut ponte pants. They are easy to pull on, coordinate with a lot of my sweaters, and are more comfortable than jeans. Plus, if I leave the house, I feel like I at least tried to create the illusion that I might have my sh*t together, instead of presenting to the world like a troll from under a bridge. 

“Ponte” has become the current fashionable fabric replacement for the polyester double knit popular when I was a kid. Polyester was attractive for being cheap and not needing ironing. It was also hot and scratchy. This was also around the time polyester took some heat for being a petroleum-based product during the oil scarcity of the 1970s. Ponte, on the other hand, is a blend with the features of polyester double knit  and is much more breathable. If you sweated in a polyester suit in the 1970s you know what I mean. Ponte isn't so bad, but I probably wouldn't wear it in the summer.

Current favorite
ponte pants.

It struck me the other day that my current favorite pants are pretty much the same as the pants I got for school in seventh or eighth grade. Back then I had maroon pull-on pants with a wide elastic waistband that I liked to wear with my official school shoes that year which were two-tone brown oxfords with a cork platform. Now I have charcoal gray, black, and dark brown ponte pants in basically the same style pant as junior high. My shoe collection is much larger (adult income!) so the various footwear options include casual booties, dressy boots, loafers, and combat style boots.

The polyester pants of my early adolescence had issues. For one thing, everything in our house went into the dryer and my beloved polyester pants shrank in length. It was very uncool at the time to have your socks showing. The dryer shrinkage, coupled with a growth spurt, meant that after a month or two of school my pants hovered above my ankles in what were called “floods” (because it looked like you were expecting a flood). I felt like a freak and couldn’t wait for the next gift receiving event and some new pants.

As the adult queen, sole occupant of my space, I can ensure that my polyester blend pants never see the inside of the dryer. The ponte blend might prevent shrinking but it’s not a risk I’m willing to take. Luckily, I don’t have to, and the chances of someone showing up and doing (shrinking) my laundry are slim-to-none.