Phat pants
Phat pants or phatties are a cut of jeans that are fitted at the waist but get wider down the legs all the way to the ground where they enclose the feet due to their width.
Phat pants are usually worn by ravers and can be used as a visual identifier. Usually made of denim, but can be made of any material. Ravers will often customise their phat pants by covering them with reflective materials of their own design, the brighter the better. This makes the phat pants colourful and unique, and the person wearing them can be recognised at long distances at parties because of this.
Phat pants are frequently adorned with a multitude of large pockets giving ravers a place to hold their water bottles, chupa chups, and whatever else may be necessary to get them through a weekend of partying.
Phat pants in Australian rave culture
When a raver dances the Melbourne Shuffle the hidden feet effect of the wide legs gives the appearance of the dancer floating on air.
Well known stores in Australia that make and sell Phat pants include Ministry of Style, Inacoma and Strange Days.
How they are worn
Phat pants are often worn with braces (US English: suspenders), which are not designed to be worn over the shoulders. They are quite often too short to do this anyway. They hang loosely on the pants from carabiners at the waist, and are usually brightly coloured webbing with a reflective strip sewn down the middle. Usually, the binding ring at the back is a heavy metal, which helps the braces to swing out in an arc around the dancer when spinning.
Not to be confused with
Because of the name "phat pants" some people who are not involved in the rave scene mistakenly confuse phat pants with baggy pants. Baggy jeans or "baggies" are a specific type of cut with wide legs, the same width all the way down the leg. They are closely related to loose fit and are sometimes incorrectly labelled as such.
Flares are another type of cut of jeans involving wider legs. The distinguishing feature of flares is that they are a normal fit from the hips to the knees and then widen out from the knees down to the feet.
See also
External links
- Boy talking about his phat pants
- Article in Australian newspaper The Age talking about phat pants.
- Article in Metro Times of Detroit with people talking about their phatties.
- Website selling phat pants
- Website of store selling phat pants
- Photo gallery of store selling phat pants - contains phat pants for guys and girls, and shows that they are the same distinct cut.
- How to make your own phat pants