Introducing the Big Pants Index

Flowing Pants look best in Linens

You might not guess what it is, but it makes a lot of sense.

Polka's offering a parade of pants — and not just any old pants, but big pants. Pants that are almost always pleated and that billows around the legs. Pants in leather and wool. Pants that are almost … pantaloons, which sometimes were tucked into knee-high boots so they puffed out around the thighs, and sometimes truncated into knickerbockers so they only looked like they were tucked into the boots.

The Modern Romantics. Perhaps, a nod to the “dandy” theme.

And all of it was made more interesting by the tensions — between masculine and feminine, hard and soft — running like threads through the looks. The effect was less escapist than and more pointed.

It seemed to say, forget the hemline index — that folky “economic indicator” suggesting that skirts go up when things are good and come down when things turn bad — and instead consider the big pants gauge: the idea that when things get unpredictable, when you feel like you are teetering on the edge of the volcano, a lot of material around the legs may be exactly what everyone wants to wear. Well, it is a form of protective covering. Why not also a bellwether?