Adjustability

To make these trousers as versatile as possible, they feature a loose cut with tapered legs that allows for layering, on and off the bike wear and a gender-neutral fit. 

• Versatility

When out on hiking or cycling trips, it is important to keep the kit list to a minimum, to limit weight and make the journey more pleasant. However, limiting weight usually means limiting comfort, and everyone’s tolerance to comfort is different.

The Wrap pants have been designed to be a practical piece of clothing that is light enough to keep as a clean spare and that keeps a low-key look. We wear them at camp when the air gets chilly, in the train to and back from our trips, when visiting places, at the laundrette when our cycling/hiking clothes are having a much needed wash, when the temperatures unexpectedly plummet during the day, and at home.

The Wrap trousers feature four large pockets, an adjustable belt, a key or glove loop and cinchable hems.

• Gender neutrality

The Wrap pants are gender-neutral, with a cut that suits most male and female anatomies at the waist and hips. The pattern was designed around both morphologies to refine and adapt it: it is important to us to offer a cut that (actually) fits both silhouettes. It’s an item that can be lent and handed over, that will handle slight body fluctuations and that aims to be inclusive. 

One-seam construction

The Wrap pants are made out of lightweight 100% polyester woven fabric. This fabric is soft and quick drying but presents little stretch. To make up for its lack of elasticity, the Wrap pants’ pattern call on intrinsic fabric properties that allow for a great range of movements when turned into trousers.

Selvedge jeans : concept

The first solution to make up for the lack of stretch in the 100% polyester fabric is to add ease to the garment. Ease is the amount of room that is added to a piece of clothing to make it comfortable to wear and allow movement. Adding ease, however, will increase the final bulk of the piece as it requires using more fabric. To add movement allowance while limiting the bulk of these trousers, we drew inspiration from traditional workwear that was made from non-stretchy fabric but had to accommodate movement. Selvedge jeans were our starting point. 

Before becoming a fashionable piece to wear, selvedge jeans were worn by field and mine workers as they were hardwearing but not constricting. This ease of movement comes from the way the fabric was cut. 

Selvedge jeans were made from a narrow type of denim fabric that was produced in the 1800s. To limit waste, pattern pieces were placed against the edge of the fabric, making the side leg straight. The body, however, isn’t straight: when worn, selvedge jeans will distort to adapt to the body’s curves, resulting in a slight inwards twisting of the pants’ legs.  

With this deformation comes another consequence: as the pants’ legs deform to adapt to the wearer’s body, this creates extra ease around the crotch, thus more room for movement. 

The Wrap pants take direct inspiration from the patterns of selvedge jeans. They feature a straight leg side, meaning that, when worn, they will also slightly twist around the legs and offer more ease at the crotch. This makes the Wrap pants as comfortable to wear when sat as they are when stood up, while avoiding the excess fabric that would come from adding ease all around. 

Grainlines and fabric stretch.

To complement the movement allowance that comes with having straight legs, the Wrap pants call in for another fundamental principle of patternmaking: bias grain. Bias grain is one of the three different grainlines found in woven fabric, each of them presenting different characteristics. 

Woven fabric is constructed with threads woven perpendicularly: the lengthwise threads are called warp threads; the width wise ones are called weft. The weft and warp generate the three grainlines found in woven fabric: the straight grain corresponds to the warp direction, the cross grain to the weft direction, and the bias grain is 45° across them. These grainlines have different properties, resulting directly from the threads used to weave the fabric. The straight and cross grain will only stretch as much as the material allows – pure cotton won’t stetch much, a cotton-elastane blend will have more elasticity. The bias grain, however, will stretch a lot more as it will distort the warp and weft threads.  

Most garments are cut on the straight grain. This results in a piece of clothing that hangs straight and won’t distort. However, it is sometimes interesting to cut the pattern on the biais grain, when extra elasticity is necessary. Gussets, found at the crotch and inseam of some trousers for example, are usually cut on the bias as they will add stretch to the overall piece.

Wrap construction.

The Wrap pants make use of this extra stretch found on the bias grain to compensate for the lack of elasticity of the quick drying, lightweight polyester fabric by removing the side seam.

Most trousers feature a side seam that results from having to join curved back and front leg pieces. But the Wrap pants’ legs are straight, and the fabric we use today is twice the width of selvedge denim: we can cut the legs out of one piece. Removing the side seam not only reduces bulk and possible friction points, but it makes the most out of the elasticity from the bias grain.

When cut, the legs of the Wrap pants are composed of continuous threads that run across the entire piece, front and back. Instead of having a side seam that wouldn’t allow for any malleability between the front and back leg pieces, the Wrap pants legs distort and stretch to adapt to the position. When riding a bike, this means that the trousers won’t constrict movement when pedalling, as the leg alternates between a straight and a bent position. The Wrap trousers are also particularly comfortable to wear when sat at camp or in a train as the fabric will stretch around the hips, thighs and knees.  

The single piece, wrap construction allows these trousers to be comfortable without having to add much ease. The Wrap pants will pack down to the size and weight of three Snicker bars, making them an ideal piece to keep at hand at all times. 

Lightweight, fast drying polyester fabric

The Wrap trousers are made out of 100%, 86g/sqm polyester. This fabric has been chosen for its abilities to dry quickly, not wrinkle much, strength vs. weight ratio, and recyclability.

• How it’s made

Polyester fabric is made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) pellets. These pellets are melted then extruded to form primary fibres. The fibres are spun together to make polyester yarn, then woven to get the final woven polyester fabric.

Polyester fabric is particularly durable and fast-drying. This is due to the shape of the primary fibres, which are long, thin threads (like very thin spaghetti). Contrary to natural fibres, polyster threads are solid and particularly smooth : water isn’t absorbed and will stay at the surface of the fibre.



While having moisture absorbing fibres is welcome in some cases (for T Shirts, for example), polyester’s non-porous characteristic is interesting to work with for garments that need to dry fast and that aren’t much exposed to sweat. The Wrap pants take advantage of this characteristic to offer a lightweight, durable and fast-drying piece.

However, the polyetser fabric used for the Wrap pants doesn’t present much stretch. Instead of using a polyester-elastane blend, which would exclude postuse recycling and woudn’t be as fast-drying, we chose to concentrate on the construction of the trousers to make them as comfortable as possible while keeping their recyclability.