Acne Studios Red Leather Pants
It was July of 2020, and no one was vaccinated. I was living back home in Upstate New York. I had essentially zero social life outside of my waitressing job. My favorite form of fun at this time was reading and online shopping. Essentially, it was a super down in the dumps season of life. I was not living the lifestyle of someone who wears flashy or interesting clothes, but when I saw these red leather Acne Studios pants on the The Real Real, I was captivated! Everything about them drew me in. The bright, tomato-red tone, the straight cut, the high rise, the button fly, the real lamb’s leather. I could see myself bopping around cosmopolitan cities, between all my very important meetings and appointments. In short, doing everything the opposite of what I was doing now. Despite being consignment (although new with tags!), the price of $225 was still a prohibitive factor. But you know when you just can’t shake an idea? Those kinds of thoughts that once you have them, you can’t un-think. The Red Leather Pants became the Holy Grail to me (like a lunatic, I’m AWARE) and I couldn’t not have them.
Then, weeks go by. The Red Leather Pants are still available, yet I’m continuing to hem and haw. But one fine day, in search of a dopamine hit (and feeling loose after a drink or two, I’m sure) I convinced myself the price was worth it for what these pants will mean to me. I reached for the credit card and entered my shipping address before I could change my mind. Confirm order. Click. DONE!
A few days later, The Red Leather Pants arrive on my doorstep. They are buttery soft, the color is exactly how it looked on the website, the cut is amazing, not too skinny, not too wide. But—they are too big on me. I try them on with all different tops, examining from every angle, trying to convince myself that they fit perfectly. They don’t. The waist has a huge gap and the legs are too wide. On top of all that, I still have no occasion to wear them. I didn’t have the heart to return them, since I still found The Red Leather Pants so enchanting. Instead, I put them away in the back of my closet for a long time.
Several months later, I found myself going to the tailor to have some things hemmed, and remembered my leather pants. I wasn’t even sure if leather was something that could be altered, but I brought them along with me on a lark. Sure enough, my hesitation was warranted because my she told me regretfully that she doesn’t work with leather. When I asked her who she can recommend to me, she couldn’t give me a name. Damn. At this point, I had already accepted the loss of my money, but wasn’t quite ready to let go of the idea of my manic pixie dream pants.
I all but forgot about the Red Leather Pants until August of 2021 (more than a year after buying them). I had been accepted to an MBA program in France and needed to head down to the city for my visa interview. A thought occurred to me that if there’s anywhere in the whole wide world where there’s a tailor with the savoir-faire to alter leather garments, it’s in NYC. After some light googling, I was now going to kill two birds with one stone—visa and pants altered on the same day
Soon enough, I was on the Metro-North Hudson line from Poughkeepsie to Grand Central. Before going to the visa center in Mid Town, I head down to Union Square to see what the prognosis was for my little red baby. A chic receptionist greets me, I give her my name and wait to be called. The tailor is not a small talker (respect), and as I step up to the podium-like riser, he wordlessly and swiftly pins the pants around my legs until they resemble the exact fit I wanted.
“Is this what you want them to look like?” he asks in a monotonous tone.
“Yes. That’s exactly how what I want,” I reply coolly, feeling obligated to match his energy.
“Yeah alright, so this entails entirely re-cutting the garment. It’s a big job. $400.” he responds nonchalantly.
Now, I appreciate that this was probably a fair price. Clothing alterations, are tedious, extremely technical, and take a lot of skill. I know this personally. But, bitch, when I tell you I was FLOORED! I tried to keep a poker face. I suddenly realize that I’m just in way too deep here with my love affair with The Red Leather Pants. At this point, it’s a sunk cost. Probably I’ll try to consign them again. All of these thoughts happen within a few seconds, and outwardly I think I have a cool demeanor, but he must have sensed my hesitation. Suddenly, and very casually, he starts to pin the pants again in a different way. It felt like that scene in Cinderella when the birds and mice effortlessly drape and sew a new ball gown for the princess. Finished pinning, he steps back and shows me the new iteration. Again, they look amazing, a tad looser than the first time, but still a world of difference.
“This is with just adjusting the sides. It would be $200,” he says practically yawning.
I don’t know if this is some sort of sales tactic he was using to soften the blow, but I was convinced at this point I would be losing more money by coming all this way and leaving with nothing but a pair of un-wearable $225 pants.
“Alright yeah, let’s do it,” I tell him.
I pay the receptionist $200 plus sales tax and she instructs me to pick them up in two weeks.
Fast forward to November of 2021. I am just over a month into my grad program. I have three college friends visiting me in Paris, one of whom is staying with me. I’m subleasing a 23 square meter studio in the 19th arrondissement, so not the ideal hosting situation. Luckily, my friend works for the Dorchester Collection and therefore gets heavily discounted stays at any of their 5-star hotel locations. She books one night at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée. This is the kind of establishment where the absolute cheapest option is 1,200 euros a night, you know, for the real shit-box sort of accommodation. The most expensive suites go for tens of thousands of euros a night. Not wanting to miss out on crashing the fancy shmancy hotel, I go to hangout with them in their room.
They can sniff poor in these sorts of joints. The Red Leather Pants are now officially the most expensive thing in my wardrobe (if we count the cost of alterations), so I finally had what I felt was the perfect occasion to wear them. I pair The Red Leather Pants with a humble navy blue Uniqlo cashmere sweater and some basic New Balance sneakers. I get to the hotel around 8pm. The receptionist escorts me from the lobby all the way to my friend’s room which I feel is overbearing, but it’s probably because rich people expect this sort of service or maybe tend to get easily lost in the labyrinthine upscale hotel. We hangout, drink prosecco, eat snacks, do an obligatory Instagram photo-shoot on the ornate spiral staircase, we wear the complimentary, stark white terry cloth bathrobes. I was luxuriating in it all until around midnight when I decide it’s time for me to go back to the reality of my modest studio since the metro will stop running soon, and I will turn into a pumpkin.
At 12:30 in the morning, I’m riding the metro all alone, pretty drunk, just like I’ve done maybe 5,371 times before. I’m sitting right next to the exit mindlessly scrolling Twitter when the warning buzzer for the automatic doors drones. Suddenly my phone flies out of my hand.
A pickpocket?!?!
For a split second it doesn’t register, but before I know it, my body is reacting before my brain. I jam myself into the closing doors, prying myself out and begin a full-out sprint after the thief. If you thought The Red Leather Pants would be restrictive of movement, you would be sorely mistaken!! I essentially ran the 100m dash in them. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I’ve never run faster in my adult life than in these pants as I foolishly chased down a pickpocket. I truly don’t think this guy ever expected me to react quickly enough, let alone be a goddamn track star. When he turned around and saw me in hot pursuit, I swear I could see the fear of God in his eyes. All the while I’m yelling STOP HIM STOP HIM to the others on the platform and creating a huge scene. Luckily, a few dudes ahead of me picked up on what was happening and joined me in the chase (super hot). The thief, quickly approaching the steep staircase to the exit, finding himself cornered, gave up and threw my phone on the ground for me to recover (and quickly Clorox).
I may have spent over $400 on The Red Leather Pants, but I saved myself the cost of an $900 iPhone while wearing them, so I would actually call them a steal!
5/5 stars!