Too many people treat leggings as a one-size-fits-all product that doesn’t need too much thought when you’re faced with a choice of different options.
In reality, this complacency leads lots of people to end up with leggings that are a bad fit. Worse still, you might not even know it until it’s brought to your attention in an embarrassing way.
To avoid this, here are a few pieces of advice that will let you select the most suitable leggings for your body shape and your budget.
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Don’t just take the retailer’s word for it that their leggings are great. Instead, check out independent reviews of the best leggings and use this as a way to filter out the lesser brands.
You can also ask your fashionable friends for their own feelings about leggings. Word-of-mouth recommendations hold a lot of clouts, and it’s also a good way of getting legging horror stories that can highlight brands you need to steer clear of.
Because fashion is a global business and e-commerce makes it easy for brands to sell to audiences worldwide, sizing is a bit of a mess.
One of the best ways to shop for clothes online without ordering items that are entirely the wrong size for your body is to only choose retailers that have clear sizing information available to customers.
This is about more than looking for leggings advertised as small, medium, and large; you also need a site to show you specific dimensions for their products.
Of course, if these are not available, or the measurements are given in a format you’re not familiar with, an international size guide can be handy. Converting between how leggings are sized and sold in different regions will save you a lot of hassle.
A quality pair of leggings will have enough elasticity to fit your figure and feel comfortable in one fell swoop. What a lot of people don’t realize is that this stretchiness is not universal; some products are better at it than others.
Reading the small print on product listings pages is the key. Look for 4-way stretch fabric, which gives you multidimensional suppleness, as opposed to the more restrictive 2-way stretch equivalents.
The material matters in this regard as well; leggings made from synthetic fabrics can hold their shape and offer more flexibility than those using natural fibers. However, if you prefer the feel of cotton or wool, you can still go this route, so long as you are super-careful with your measurements.
There’s no better sign of leggings being the wrong size if they are at all translucent. This applies whether you are standing upright, or bending over. Simply put, if they aren’t opaque in all positions, then they are almost certainly too tight to be worn, at least in public.
Check this when testing out leggings, and move to a larger size if there is any hint of them being see-through.
Last but not least, you should always pay attention to how your body feels when wearing leggings, and if there is any discomfort then it’s a surefire signal that the sizing is out of kilter.
If you feel that your thighs are being pinched or restricted, whether at rest or while working out, or there is unusualness in any other context, don’t just put up with it. Instead, rethink your size choice and your body will thank you.