One predictable lockdown symptom has been an increase in waistlines. But there have also been plenty of decreases. And even if you’ve been hiding from your neighbors and cropping your lower half out of Zoom calls, we can tell what your midsection is doing by the pants you’re buying.
“The number of people who are in a new size is pretty staggering,” explained Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh. “Some people gained weight during the pandemic, and many people lost weight. But both on the men’s side of the business and women’s side. More than 25% of consumers have a new size today.”
It’s not hard to imagine why this might happen. For many of us, working from home gave us a chance to exercise. Replace the drive to work with a walk around the neighborhood. Or work all day in your yoga pants, making a trip to the gym or a run less of a hassle. Also, eating at home gave you an opportunity to each fresh food for much cheaper than you could when you had to grab lunch downtown. Plus, you had a chance to get dinner going earlier, so there was less Chinese takeout.
All of those things can add up to dropping a few sizes.
The opposite happened quite a bit, too.
Losing the commute, if you lived in a place such as Brooklyn or Manhattan, probably meant dropping a mile of walking and 20 minutes of standing in a sweaty subway car. If you were afraid of coming within 6 feet of a stranger, and you lived in a crowded place, you might have hunkered down.
Your pickup basketball game was canceled, and maybe the authorities even removed the rims from your local court. Alternatively, the cancellation of your social events and your beach trip simply sapped your desire to remain svelte. All this added up to a waist-size upgrade.
The result: lots of jeans not fitting, one way or another, until you could shell out for a new pair.
Maybe beltmakers and suspenders-dealers made a killing, too.
