It is useful to have a few tried-and-tested formulas you can rely on for those times when you need an outfit that just works. Think of them like the wardrobe equivalent of your go-to recipes. When you get home from work hungry, you need a few quick and easy dinner ideas in your back pocket so that when you open the fridge you don’t need to think too hard. Same goes for clothes.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to open my wardrobe with no preconceived idea of what I am going to wear and put an outfit together on a whim – but no way do I want to do that every day. That would be exhausting. Again, it’s a bit like making dinner. You may be a keen cook who loves to try out new recipes, but that doesn’t mean you want to be rummaging around at the back of the store cupboard for gochujang or date molasses every night. Sometimes your brain needs a break and you want to get dressed, or make dinner, on autopilot.
Do you remember how during the pandemic we were obsessed with tracksuits? Along with banana bread and Joe Wicks, tracksuits were the sacred totems of lockdown. We had so much on our minds that there was no bandwidth for outfit planning and we were happy to be given permission to wear the same, super-simple outfit every day.
It worked because clothes are one of the ways we acclimatise to our surroundings, and a soft, stretchy cocoon felt soothing and practical when we were stuck at home, but on a mental high alert that made it impossible to actually relax. As in, a tracksuit is good for being on the sofa but would also work if you suddenly had to spring into action.
Plus we are social animals, and there was something comforting about knowing that even in isolation, we were a society united via the medium of athleisure.
I bought my one and only matching tracksuit in 2020. After a good year in heavy rotation, I found myself minded to split it up. It’s in lilac, which in retrospect was not perhaps the wisest colour choice for someone who has never bought or worn anything lilac before or since – hey, it was a weird time – and it gradually evolved into being joggers to wear with a white T-shirt and a sweatshirt that looks nice over a denim shirt.
I miss the simplicity of that tracksuit as a low-key purposeful look for working from home or Saturday errands. This spring, fashion is finally serving up a new version of this look in the form of wide-leg jeans and a hoodie. Jeans and a hoodie is not a groundbreaking look, but that is exactly why it works.
Jeans and a hoodie is tried and tested on so many practical levels: you have plenty of pocket room for your phone and keys, you have a hood if it rains, the fabric is a comfortable shoulder-season midweight and everything can be chucked in the washing machine. It is a combination that says understated and effortless.
Had you been wearing this combination a decade ago, your jeans would have been skinny, in contrast to the soft roundness of the top half. When you pair a hoodie with more up-to-date, baggier jeans, the silhouette is completely different. The loose top and bottom halves now mirror each other.
The shapes are a match. Almost like a tracksuit, in fact.
Do the jeans have to be wide? Yes, I’m afraid they do. The good news is that as someone who is not finding it completely easy to adjust to wide-leg jeans (I’m getting there, having ditched the skinnies in favour of straight legs, but flappy denim still feels tricky) I can report that the hoodie combo is the most wearable wide-leg jean outfit I’ve tried. The wide jean shape is essential, because that’s what makes this feel like A Look. It is a formula that works.
Try it once; you will be reaching for it on repeat before you know it.
Styling assistant: Sam Deaman. Model: Liz De Aza at Milk. Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Ouai and Westman Atelier. Shirt: Arket. Hoodie: Anine Bing. Jeans: & Other Stories
