White jeans for gents: can you pull them off?

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Are white jeans the new red trousers? Just like the scarlet corduroys and raspberry chinos so beloved of Hoorays, Sloanes, chins, estate agents and equine enthusiasts but reviled by the rest of us, white jeans are a divisive apparel category.
For the devoted WTF (White Trouser Fella) — Mick Jagger, Paul Weller, Brad Pitt, Prince Harry, Steve McQueen, JFK, Matt Damon, Andrew Garfield and Ryan Reynolds et al — white jeans are the very essence of summer. Sunny, fresh, versatile, sporty, preppy and fabulously Euro-sprezzaturian. White jeans speak of Blue Note album covers, old Ralph Lauren advertisements, Gitanes-smoking modernists, sailors and Cote d’Azur lotharios. (Your devoted WTF reporter, btw, has eight or nine pairs — Arket, Trunk, Zara, Brooks Brothers and Lee.)
For the anti-whites, Daz-fresh, Liz Hurley-white jeans are a WTF clothing choice, as in, WTF are you wearing those for? Here’s Greg Proops on the subject. “I live in Hollywood, where grown men wear white trousers,” the comedian and actor says. “You should wear white trousers on only two occasions. One, if you sell ice cream. And two, never.”
In the heat of August, aka peak WTF season, millennial women may have an alternative view. When they think of men in white jeans, it is not the mega-louche graphic design superstar Peter Saville or David Hemmings in Blow-Up that come to mind, but male Love Island contestants in Asos sale stock. Hench hunks such as the Love Islanders Kem Cetinay, Chris Hughes and Dom Lever, all of whom favoured the spray-on, fertility-reducing, chubby thigh-chafing “jeggings” style of tighty-whities in the show’s early seasons, were once reported to have caused a surge in white denim sales across platforms including H&M and BoohooMan.
This has been happening for several summers now. The online retailer Lyst reported that searches for white denim increased by 42 per cent in July, 2019, compared with that March — Love Island’s Tommy Fury season — and sales of white jeans in May that year almost surpassed sales of blue jeans for the first time.
Elvis may be to blame. Key WTF moments in popular culture and men’s fashion, across seven decades, must take a jeans-too-white responsibility. The pristine, five-pocket pants first emerged in the 1960s, Lee’s “Lee Westerner” range, aimed at aspirant gauchos and weekend cowboys, produced not in trad blue denim but an off-white “cotton satin”. LA folk loved Westerners (see Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood) and Elvis wore Lee’s white strides in his 1964 film Kissin’ Cousins (and kept them for himself when filming ended).
Of course no one with a proper, dirt-adjacent, manual job ever wore white workwear jeans. Certainly not cowboys. But they were big with hustlers and playboys. During his romantic tenure with Bridget Bardot the German playboy Gunter Sachs travelled the world, from Tahiti to St Tropez, with a capsule wardrobe of just 12 pieces: six blue shirts, two blazers and four pairs of white trews — the perfect sun-chasing (and girl-chasing) combination.
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White jeans were adopted by mods, rude boys and skinheads, Alain Delon, the Clash and French new wave movie stars (Jean-Paul Belmondo in Pierrot le fou and A Man and a Woman), the fashion then fading to black (and blue) in subsequent years. It wasn’t until the 1990s when the white style made its first genuine comeback, with the Austrian designer Helmut Lang presenting a white jean-dominant collection splattered with paint, ripped, distressed and patchworked. Just like the artists Jackson Pollock and William Turnbull used to wear in the studio. Because of Lang, white jeans became the garment of choice for designers and creatives.
How do you wear them? The correct cut is key. “If in doubt, stick to a classic Levi 501 style,” Jason Hughes, the Wallpaper magazine fashion director, says. “Pure white, straight cut, slightly loose. Definitely not too tight. That is so over. A small turn-up is good.” It’s also worth noting that the white jeans experience is fraught with danger and potential social embarrassment — every visit to the buffet, bar, dining table and, yes, the urinal offering up stains, spills and dribbles that will be ten times more glaringly evident on white canvas than on normal denim fabric.
Footwear? “Definitely not sneakers. A smart shoe looks best with white denim; loafers, a cowboy boot, even a chunky brogue.” Be careful with sizing too. White jeans can be “fattening” rather than slimming. You want a fit that is straight, slender and highish-waisted but not too snug. No one needs to know what religion you are or the brand of mobile phone you have shoved in your pocket.
Done right, “white jeans are jazzy and cosmopolitan”, according to Nick Ashley, the menswear designer and son of Laura Ashley. “They are dashing and they go with everything else ‘summer’ — blazer, T-shirt, denim cowboy shirt, loafers, tanned ankles, chilled Provencal rosé etc.” Ashley stipulates a denim weight no lower than 12oz for optimum WTF action. “Anything else is too lightweight. A bit dirty and beaten up is good too.”
Ashley has just released his own white jeans collaboration with the brand El Solitario, inspired by the motorcyclist and stylist Dimitri Coste, and says they are intended to be worn “muddy-backsided”.
So, can you wear white denim after the August bank holiday? Hughes is happy to make a case for “winter whites”: “White jeans on men look great with a heavy coat and work boots,” he says.
Attention all men: if you’re ever tempted to purchase a pair of white trousers, keep the receipt, says Harriet Walker
I’m a pretty easygoing fashion editor — rare is the wardrobe item upon which I call down a blanket ban — but white trousers on men are beyond the pale, I’m afraid. “Even jeans?” I hear you cry. Especially jeans. Too sockless Chelsea Ken doll by half — with apologies (but no retraction) if this is precisely your vibe.
Alas, white trousers do appear to be trending with celebs at the moment, in which case — to borrow from Neil Kinnock — I warn you not to be ordinary or old. If you are 19, with the body and natural flair of a male flamenco dancer, you should be fine. (I am prepared to make allowances for beige linen slacks, which can look dashing, in a crumpled Martin Bell sort of way.)
Among the men I know, garments are judged to be suitable according to how many people might notice and/or remark upon them: ideally none. Admittedly, this isn’t the most joyful way to get dressed — or live! — but it does more accurately reflect the male psyche than a pair of gleaming Daz-fresh strides. Think how grubby and knackered that one pocket that you (parlously) keep all your belongings in would get.
By contrast, and perhaps because, until now, only Quentin Crisp and Rylan Clark (arguably his latter-day counterpart) actually wore white trousers, they just seem a bit showy on anybody whose day job isn’t professional dilettante. On a gym-hench man white trousers look needy, and on a more dweeby build, rather seedy (David Bowie being the exception that proves the rule here). Andrew Tate not only wears white trousers but sells them in his online store — need I continue?
Beyond those playboy connotations, unsexy in their own way, white trousers also have something rather fastidious about them that is fundamentally unattractive. That might sound sexist, but I say this as a woman who is unattractively fastidious when wearing them too. I like my white jeans but I am never my most carefree self in them because I am always worried about what might flick or spill on them — and I don’t even have to stand up to wee in mine.
How would I react if my husband bought a pair? By checking he had kept the receipt. What would I do if someone wore them on a date? Text my friends from the loo within half an hour. What if, in some unlikely parallel universe, my husband wore a pair on date night? I would explain that, if you have children, wearing white trousers is an unforgivable act of male privilege because you are subconsciously assuming your wife will either a) do all the childcare so your trousers don’t get stained, or b) wash the stains out of your trousers.
If you do find yourself drawn to a pair this summer, here’s a handy checklist to work out whether white trousers are appropriate or not. Are you a waiter in a beach resort? Are you heading to dinner at the Captain’s Table later — and are you in fact that very Captain? Oh wait, are you Richard Gere? Napoleon, then? Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy about to go for a swim? Or are you just ha, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ aliiiiiive? If the answer to any of these happens to be “no”, just wear the blue chinos instead.