Do Sweatpants Jeans Live Up to the Hype?
Prior to this exercise, I considered myself a jeans purist.
Today’s issue inaugurates Back Row Labs, a new product-review-focused section of Back Row. In this installment of Labs, I’m taking a closer look at a sartorial expression of therapeutic laziness (one of 2025’s biggest trends): sweatpants jeans. Therapeutic laziness involves rejecting productivity and “wellness” in favor of spending time in bed (“bed rotting”) and wearing clothes that feel like pajamas.
Today’s issue is sponsored by Brooklinen, which combines core tenets of therapeutic laziness — indulgence, comfort, literally being one with your blankets — with affordability. If you are bed-rotting-inclined, Brooklinen obviously has you ~covered~ (I can’t help myself). I am a hot sleeper and haven’t had a duvet on my bed in years. But over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been sleeping with Brooklinen’s Luxe Sateen Duvet Cover in “Solid White”; Luxe Sateen Sheet Set in “Oyster in Blue”; and Dreamweave Waffle Bed Blanket in “Storm.” I haven’t slept with this many layers on my bed in years, and this 100-percent-cotton bedding doesn’t make me hot at night. I am rediscovering the joy of ending and beginning each day in a fluffy, well-styled bed. There’s snow on the ground outside my bedroom window, but this bedding gives ocean, it gives happiness, it gives “lie in me all day.”
This is the problem with an untold number of pants — so few non-athleisure styles are conducive to therapeutic laziness. Work pants are nearly always unsatisfying and uncomfortable, an inevitable compromise for a dress code. If we’re being really honest, jeans are frequently uncomfortable and hard-to-fit, too. I work from home and can generally dress however I like, and, on a typical day, where I take my kids to school then sit at my desk for most of the next nine hours, I wear sweats.
However, if you wear sweatpants and follow fashion and are remotely familiar with Karl Lagerfeld’s canon of quotes, you might recall him saying that sweatpants “are a sign of defeat.” You might also think of Tom Ford, who, when interviewed by Taffy Brodesser-Akner for GQ in 2018, said he only owned “one pair of white sweatpants,” which were required by his tennis club. In other words, it’s hard to forget that capital F fashion has a history of regarding sweatpants with searing disdain. (Ford exited his namesake brand in 2023; it now makes women’s cashmere track pants for $2,600.)
This is where rag & bone arrives with one of the most genuinely innovative items of apparel in the last few years: sweatpants jeans. These are sweatpants that have photorealistic pictures of jeans on them, so that they look just like jeans, but are, in fact, not jeans. It’s a mind-fuck to run your finger over the “pockets,” which are not pockets at all, but just pictures of pockets (trompe-l'œil, if we want to use the technical term).
Prior to my awareness of sweatpants denim, I hadn’t thought about rag & bone this much since the late 2000s, when we all wore skinny jeans and eyeliner, everything trendy in New York took place in industrial warehouses, and we drank vodka sodas instead of martinis. In this period, rag & bone’s show was one of the hottest at New York Fashion Week, up there, “cool”-wise, with Alexander Wang. I have a vague memory of trying to get invited in my capacity as a writer for The Cut — and getting denied. Kate Bosworth was one of their front-row “It” girls. The brand, founded by Marcus Wainwright and David Neville, may have made you at one point covet a leather biker vest or cigarette pants with diagonal zippers.
Anyway, that was then. rag & bone is different now. Guess?, Inc. and WHP Global (a “global brand management firm”) acquired it in 2024 (Guess?, Inc. invested $56.5 million in the transaction). But I believe the brand’s core pretension laid the groundwork for sweatpants jeans, the whole premise of which is fooling people into thinking you’re wearing something that’s much more elevated than what you’re actually wearing. The jeans have gone so mass that Good Morning America did a whole segment on them — which just shows you how unsatisfied people are with regular jeans.
After I became sweatpants jeans-curious, I started noticing jeans that weren’t quite jeans everywhere — jeans that had drawstrings and elastic waists instead of zippers and buttons. Jeans that took the notion of jeans and said, “FU, I’m going to be softer than that.” You can buy these styles of jeans at the Gap or FWRD. Margiela even makes an avant garde pair that, reader, I don’t mind!
I tried rag & bone’s viral sweatpants jeans, along with several other pairs of not-jeans jeans. I am from Austin, Texas, and have spent my life in jeans and jorts. Prior to this exercise, I considered myself a jeans purist. I was stunned by how much I liked the sweatpants jeans. My friend and stylist Diana Tsui who writes
, said this is okay:
rag & bone calls the sweatpants jeans collection “Miramar,” which could refer to the Miramar in Florida, California, or Spain, or the Spanish word that translates to “sea view.” (The the “Oyster in Blue” Brooklinen sheets have the same connotation.)
When I tried on the Miramar terry wide-leg pant, which cost $188, I subversively asked my husband what he thought of my “new pants.”
“They look nice,” he said.
“They’re not jeans!” I replied.
He walked over and took a closer look. “You look so pleased with yourself,” he said.
When we took our children to buy snow boots and I wore the sweatpants jeans, they went unremarked upon. When we got home and I asked my husband if he knew what I was wearing, he asked me if I was wearing my “jean whatevers.” My 6-year-old son, however, was fascinated by them. As someone who wears sweats every day, he couldn’t understand why someone would want to hide that they were doing this. He would come over to me and touch the “pockets” and giggle. If rag & bone hasn’t made these for kids, well, that seems like a goldmine.
If you want jazzed up sweats, the standard wide-leg pair of Miramars are just that. They’re warm enough with long socks for 30-degree weather, and could get you from a work-from-home day to happy hour. But the thing that really gives these pants away as Not Jeans is the pockets, which have a side opening, but the image of a typical jeans pocked on the front. There is no fly on the pants, but rag & bone put a seam there to create the illusion of a one. Some Miramar styles, like these jorts, which I did not try, come with fake rips that look very real.
If you want to really stick it to the Hard Pants Establishment — and maybe your office — rag & bone makes a higher wasted pair of Miramars called “Sofie” with a button and zip closure and typical jeans-style pockets, but in the same non-denim material as the other pair. These really come off as jeans and I think would much more easily be mistaken for denim than the elastic-waist ones. But they’re more expensive, at $238.
When I wore these, I found myself reaching to put my phone in my back pocket, which I often do, only to realize there wasn’t one, just a photo of a pocket. But even I forgot I wasn’t wearing jeans. They are softer and cozier than regular denim, but since they’re more tailored, they’re not as comfortable as the true sweatpants style.
I searched around for a less expensive version of rag & bone’s “jean whatevers.” I’ll send another post about those soon, but the closest I could find were these Gap elastic-waist jeans which looked horrid to me on the website but actually weren’t in person (h/t Zac Posen). The closest, less expensive true dupe attempt I could find were the “denim-wash” joggers from Cos. Cos has seldom steered me wrong, but these pants wouldn’t even pass for jean whatevers — they’re just sweats. I was reminded of what Emilia Petrarca wrote here in Back Row when I asked her to investigate Amazon dupes: “This year, the ultimate luxury will be the un-dupable.” Maybe the Miramars are just that — for now anyway.
To feel more comfortable than you look is a new kind of luxury. I wouldn’t SLEEP in sweatpants jeans, but I have my Brooklinen sheets for that.
Thank you again to Brooklinen for sponsoring this issue and supporting independent journalism. Shop before the President’s Day sale ends on February 19 and get 25 percent off.
Loose Threads
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In a note to clients, Bernstein analyst Luca Solca called this “an ‘annus horribilis’ for Kering.”
Loved this take on the Gucci situation in : “[It] seems to me, a person who is never going to drop a ton of cash on new luxury goods due to not having the kind of discretionary income that would make that sensible, that maybe the rich people who do — or even the not-so-rich people who are simply spendy! – are also likely BORED of the same old people just rotating through the same old labels. It’s always the same five designers up for the same five jobs and they’re all just playing musical chairs. I cannot imagine anyone finds this exciting or inspiring. Slimane for Gucci feels like someone at Kering just spun a wheel and went with whatever white guy it landed on.”
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Anyone who has scrolled TikTok has probably seen the ads for Halara's version of the sweatpants jean. I will tell you that they are pretty darn awesome - comfortable, look like jeans, and have all the pockets (including on the back) that jeans usually do. But soooo stretchy. I ordered on a whim but have ended up wearing them quite a bit. NOBODY CAN TELL that they're not real jeans.
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