Why are there ripples?
I got a lot of feedback from Part I of last weeks Perfectly Fitting Pants post – it’s great to hear from you so please keep the questions coming. One of the more interesting ones had to do with the ripples that occur on the inside thigh of pants when they come under stress – be it from sitting down or when striding as we walk. It’s a fitting question as it very much ties into this coming Wednesday’s post. That said I’ll address it today as it’s a specific enough question that it won’t be sufficiently dealt with in the post.
For those of you who are unsure what we’re referring – take a look at the image below:
I’m sure this looks familiar – it’s one of the more miss-understood aspects of tailoring as these ripples often get labelled as the result of poor sewing. This is definitely not the case; the real reason is ease. In the context of making tailored clothing ease refers to the joining of two pieces of cloth whereby one side is longer than the other. The short side is stretched to fit while the longer side gets eased in with the extra fullness being evenly distributed along the full length. That fullness is what you see in the form of ripples when the thigh area get stress put on it.
Still with me?
Hopefully this is making some sense! In the case of the pants the fullness is put into the front of the thigh. There are two reasons for this – the first is that this extra fullness is critical for when we sit down. Because our seat and upper thighs are pressed into a surface we want that extra room to be on the top/front of the thigh. The second reason is that it creates a cleaner line of the pant at the back of our quads. You want the fabric to fall straight from the seat towards the knee without it collapsing onto your quad – adding shortness assists in this process.
Apologies – this was a bit of a tailoring geek-out but I hope it helps somewhat in understanding how your pants are constructed! As always let me know if you have any more questions.
Michael
info@martinfishertailors.com
