By
Bella Druckman,
a writer at the Strategist covering Gen Z shopping habits and fashion.
She joined the Strategist in 2024. Previously, she wrote about gifts at Shop Today.
One of my lifelong struggles has been finding work pants that don’t make me squirm after five minutes. At 15, I skirted around my Catholic-high-school dress code — dress pants and a collared shirt — by wearing colored jeggings from American Eagle. (Yes, this was ca. 2016.) By the time I landed my first in-person internship, I had enough linen work dresses and satin midiskirts to sustain my three days a week in the office. Now, at the Strategist, I can get away with jeans and a blouse most of the time I’m at the New York headquarters. But lately I’ve been yearning to wear something more formal than my favorite pair of straight jeans or a maxi skirt to meetings and work events. A nice pair of work pants was the answer, but the formfitting, high-rise pairs I’d tried in the past made me regret my outfit choices by lunch. This time, though, I lucked out: The selection of lowish-rise work pants has, for lack of a better word, exploded since I last gave work pants a try (that is, around 2022). And so, with hope in my heart, I went on a hunt for my white whale: actually comfortable, lowish-rise work pants.
