In the mid-aughts, there arose a generation of women whose 20-something lives were consumed by two equally important and not-incompatible concerns. The first concern was how to acquire a job interview after graduating from college. The second concern was how to avoid getting roofied at a frat party. For some reason, both of these goals involved going to Express.
Express was a store in the mall. It sold, among other apparel, pants. It sold the kind of pants that were paired either with rayon blouses for office wear, or with Steve Madden platform slides for a party ensemble that could be found in all kinds of weather on all kinds of campuses. I went to a tiny liberal arts college, and we had black Express pants with Steve Madden slides. I took a bus to Penn State, and my friend’s friends there had black Express pants with Steve Madden slides. It was winter. Arms and toes were bare. Pants were polyester and spandex. The girl next to you would watch your drink while you went to the bathroom.
Earlier this week, Express filed for bankruptcy. The company announced that it would be closing 95 stores nationwide, representing about a fifth of the total retail locations. Stores would disappear in Toledo; Miami; Fresno, Calif.; and beyond. “Closing sales” would begin soon, the company said. But then again, who knows what a closing sale really means for a chain whose stores advertise “50% off already reduced clearance” in perpetuity.
Why am I writing about this? I do not write about fashion. I don’t care about fashion. I don’t know anything about fashion. But by God do I know something about pants from Express and the aspirations of 20-year-old girls.
The most famous line is called the Editor Pant, which was not one style of pant but many, a loose consortium of work pants that existed under an umbrella term. The Editor Pant could be low-waisted, high-waisted, tapered, cropped, black, plaid. The Express website sells about 30 varieties of Editor Pant for around $80 apiece, which becomes more like $50 on already-reduced clearance. Somewhere in the back of my closet, button missing and cuffs frayed, is a pair of Editor Pants from 2007, which I wore to the first day of my Washington Post internship and never had the heart to get rid of.
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Express was not selling you pants alone. Express was selling you pants that imagined a whole life. Who wore these pants? Editors did. Maybe editors wore these pants while drinking coffee, taking the subway, editing things. Who else could wear these pants? You could. You could purchase these pants and segue into a life that was about to unfold like an episode of “Sex and the City.”
When your Editor Pants were at the dry cleaner, you might find yourself reaching for the black polyester going-out pants, and trying to turn them into office attire by adding a blazer and replacing the Steve Madden slides with sensible loafers. Did it look good? It did not. Did we do it anyway? We didn’t know any better. What we knew is that there were casual clothes, like the sweatshirts we’d worn to school for 16 years, and there were fancy clothes, like what would be worn to a prom — and then there was a whole murky middle, a class of clothes that young adult women were expected to know how to navigate, and those clothes could be purchased at Express.
The aesthetic of the Express pants was not high fashion but high assimilation. It was shopping-as-handholding, an assurance that you and millions of other young women were in it together, even if you were still figuring it out.
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The store in my nearest mall isn’t one of the ones that will be closing, but I went there a few days ago anyway, to soak up the vibe and to commune with the pants. Formerly a loyal customer, I hadn’t been inside an Express in years — which might indicate why the company is going bankrupt, or might just indicate that the store isn’t for me anymore.
But standing among the pants, I had the strongest memory of a night I’d completely forgotten: my college friends and I getting ready for a networking fair. We barely knew what networking was. We moved from dorm room to dorm room, seeking each other’s advice on shoes and résumé formatting. Somehow, I had acquired an attaché case, which seemed like a very professional thing to carry, even if it was empty inside. Ahmara told me it was, anyway, and she would go on to get a joint MD and PhD, and Jo would go on to work in television, and Lara would move to London, and Anne would become a teacher in Maine and then return to our 15-year reunion with the most perfect redheaded son.
That was all years away, though. In that moment, what we had was each other, and our whole lives ahead of us, and our shoddy wardrobes that would now make us cringe with embarrassment.
And sometimes when you think about that time in your life — how you had to bravely keep walking forward with no idea of what the future held — it fills you with such tenderness for your dumb past self, for everything you walked through and the pants you wore while doing it.
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