Men's Trouser Break - Understanding Proper Cuff Break On Male Slacks - Jeans - Pants
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, we're going to be talking about men's trousers, specifically men's trouser breaks.
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Okay, men's trousers and trouser breaks.
Now, when I'm referring to trouser breaks, what I'm talking about is the way that the
fabric folds at the cuff, and this is usually for a number of reasons.
Most and probably the most important thing is that it's the length of your trousers.
So most men, when we go in to buy a pair of pants or a pair of trousers, we never actually
think to have them hemmed.
Hemmed is nothing more than having the trouser length adjusted so that it looks optimal for
your body type, whatever that may be, so there's a lot of factors in that.
Trouser break is not limited to or being affected by the length of the trousers.
It's also going to be affected by the type of footwear that you're wearing, so women
know this better than men, but if you're wearing western boots, which usually have about a
one-inch to a one-and-a-half inch hell, those pants that you're wearing with them are going
to fit you and look differently at the cuff and they're going to have a different type
of break than if you're wearing, let's say, a driving moccasin or something that has pretty
much no heel at all.
Another thing to pay attention to is the type of fabric, so dress pants, dress slacks, all
of those usually made from a worsted wool, very lightweight.
It's going to have a very nice drape, very straight flow versus denim.
Denim is much heavier and in those cases, you can actually wear a longer pair of jeans
that, if they were dress slacks, would not look well at all.
But because of the thickness and the weight of the denim, it's going to actually spread
up some of the folding and you would actually be able to wear a longer pair of jeans, which
is one of the reasons you don't want to take jeans whenever you go looking for trousers.
The fit is just entirely different from dress slacks.
The other thing is going to be actually the width of the bottom.
Now, you see this on a lot of poorly made off-the-rack clothing that they try to make
it to fit a lot of different men, but if the bottom of the trouser is too wide, so if the
cuff is just too wide, you're going to run into the issue of the break looking really
bad.
We talked about show type.
We talked about the width.
We talked about fabric type.
The most important thing and the one we're really going to focus on today is trouser
length because this is the one that affects it the most, most of the time, and it's the
easiest one for men to adjust, but most men never think to get this done.
The three types of main breaks are the no break, the half break, and the full break.
I'll also bring up and I'm going to talk quickly about the IDGAS break, which is "I don't give
a…"
well, you can fill in the blank there, but really, this is probably most men.
And it's because they go out and they buy a pair of pants, they put it on, they look
at it.
It fits them reasonably well in the waist and it's not too long, not too short.
It works.
And so, they just go on with their merry way.
Unfortunately, if they took the time to shorten those trousers, let's say, by an inch or maybe
even have them lengthened just a bit, they would get a much better look.
Most trousers, if you actually look underneath, especially dress slacks, they've got room
to be led out or brought in.
Now, there are proportion issues.
You can't bring up a pair of trousers usually more than about an inch and a half to two
inches past that.
The proportions start to go out, but it is something that for what we're talking about
here, the difference between usually no break and a full break, sometimes it's only an inch.
So you want to get this right.
One last thing I'm going to throw out, it depends on where also you wear those trousers
at your waist.
If you find that they move up and down on your waist, well, you've probably got some
bigger issues besides the break, but that can affect how the break is.
So you want to make sure you're wearing them at a consistent point on the waist.
Okay, so let's get into the three types of breaks.
No break
Some people will call this the Italian break.
This is where you actually are showing off your shoes.
Some people would say it's very close to looking like your pants are high waters or whatever
people want to call that.
This is where the fabric falls straight down and there is no break.
Now, this is popular in Europe and I've seen it come to the United States with Tom Brown,
I believe, but this is the idea that your pants fold -- I'm not talking about really
showing off socks, although it's very easy to show off what color of socks and type of
socks you're wearing, but this is where you give your shoes a bit more attention.
This is popular with younger men.
I think it looks fine on short men, and the reason being is a short man never wants to
have the problem of having an excessive break, so I would lean on going to the half break
to the no break for a short man.
Now, let's go to the half break.
Half break
The half break is where the front of the cuff, the front of the trouser, there is a break
in it.
So when I say a break, if you can imagine the trouser line on the front and then, boom,
it goes out.
It can go in.
It depends on some of the other factors we talked about, but there is a break.
You can clearly see that it's touching the front of the shoe and there is full coverage.
This is nice.
I think this is where most men should shoot for because depending on how you miss it,
you could go one of either ways with the half or the full, and then you're still within
the realm of, I think, classic men's style.
The reason it's called the half break is it doesn’t go all the way around.
So in the back, you're going to find that usually the trouser is made or it's angled
and it's going to usually hang straight down, maybe just a little bit of a break.
Full break
Once we get a full break that goes all the way around the bottom of the shoe, that is
the full break.
The full break looks good I think on taller men because taller men usually have the opposite
issue of their trousers that they go buy off the rack and are usually too short.
And so, this goes to show that you did put in the extra time, that you did have the trousers
tailored to fit your body.
So we talked about the half break, we talked about the full break, and first of all, we
talked about no break.
Now, the one I talked about, which was me just making up actually, the "I don't give
a s--- break," basically, that's what I see on most men.
I think it's a small thing, but I see it all the time.
Look at any pictures of men who are in suits and you'll see a guy that maybe looks pretty
good in the upper body.
He made sure that jacket fit him, but then you look down at the trousers.
I mean, it looks like a square box.
The trousers could easily be brought in and that break could be fixed.
Actually, it's not even a square box.
You've got this big rumple at the bottom.
Look to get that fixed.
It's very easy to have done.
Any tailor worth his salt will be able to bring this in, or a seamstress.
In fact, you can even do it yourself.
Don't be scared.
It's not that difficult.
All right.
This has been Antonio Centeno with Real Men Real Style.
I'll see you in the next video.
Bye-bye.