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The year is 2010. I am 19. I’ve just returned from a gap year in Thailand, like pretty much every other young adult from Surrey.
I walk through Heathrow arrivals, picturing seeing my mum for the first time in months and her telling me I look incredible, tanned and very slim (I’ve been living off 7-Eleven’s low-calorie croissants and, given my teenage metabolism, am positively waiflike). Instead, she looks at me, guffaws and says: ‘What on earth are you wearing?’
A pair of patterned harem trousers I’d picked up on my travels. A gathered band at the hips ballooned out into swathes of material, only to cinch in again at my ankle. Paired with a scruffy white T-shirt and flipflops, it was the type of outfit you can wear at 19, when words like ‘unflattering’ and ‘frumpy’ exist only for mothers.
Unfortunately, Dorking is not Bangkok, and back on home soil the balloon pants lasted less than a week.
Now, at 35 and after a decade working in fashion, I looked back on the billowy style like you might a pudding-bowl haircut: funny, nostalgic but unequivocally hideous.
Harem Pants, £88, freepeople.com
Then, last October, as I scrolled through the S/S 26 collections, I froze. All over runways were those same drapey trousers. Alaïa, Balenciaga, Balmain, Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren – they were all in on it. Soon, harem pants were being hailed as this spring’s must-wear piece by everyone from SheerLuxe to Vogue.
It’s not a ‘new’ trend. Harem pants first appeared in the Middle East 2,000 years ago and over the decades have been reworked endlessly: Paul Poiret’s skirt with its harem hemline in the 1910s; hippies in the 60s who loved the non-conformity of the style; rappers like MC Hammer in the 90s. The 2026 reincarnation, however, has gone mainstream. Professional-looking women on the tube, who to the naked eye appear sane, are opting to wear them to the office.
As someone who is, in the words of my colleagues, ‘glamorous’ (thank you) and ‘overdressed’ (less kind), their popularity bamboozles me. Worn for anything that isn’t yoga, harem pants look scruffy; a midlife crisis in trouser form.
Plus, cutting the length of your leg with a cuff adds bulk to your thighs and hips, areas any woman with actual flesh would rather slim down.
But when my editor says she wants a trend testing, she means it. Which is how I ended up spending a day in this pair by Free People.
I am curvy, so opted to style them with a fitted vest that would at least give some illusion of a figure. I think I would have cried at my reflection if I’d added yet more material over my top half. I then chose a low-front kitten heel mule to elevate the look and finally lots of gold jewellery to add glamour.
Harem Pants, £88, freepeople.com
The office burst into a chorus of, ‘Oh, they aren’t that bad!’ and as I walked to the photo studio, I began to believe them. Had I been completely wrong? Did these trousers, in fact, look fabulous? But as the pictures began to stream in through the monitor, I can say with absolute confidence that my original stance was correct. These are the least flattering trousers I’ve ever worn! They add inches to the largest part of my body and hang in a way that suggests I have entirely given up.
I then asked my husband, Josh, a man who would prefer to have me permanently in a bandage dress. ‘They make you look like you’ve got bigger thighs than torso.’ Harsh, but true.
So I will not be wearing these out and about, and I’m only grateful that this challenge did not involve me parading down Oxford Street.
On a petite woman, styled with a billowing oversized jacket, huge bag and sunglasses, maybe they’d look fabulous. But this fashion director will be sticking to a high-waisted wide-leg trouser.
Victoria Adamson.
Hair: Dayna Vaughan-Teague using GHD.
Make-up: Caroline Piasecki using Shiseido
