How I finally figured out how to wear white pants

I am not kidding you when I say that I have had several pairs of white pants hanging in my closet for YEARS and I have never worn any of them. I told you a little bit about that when I started trying my capsule wardrobe. 

Every spring or summer I would buy another pair and think this was going to be the time I finally figured out how to make them work for me. This time of year I see my friends wearing them and looking adorable and I think, “Why can’t I pull that off?” 

Then I would go home and try them, but no matter what I did, I just could not make them look good on my body. Some friends recommended buying white jeans for the thicker fabric, but I have not yet been able to find them in my size without major gapage going on at the back. (The pants in the picture are from Ann Taylor and a size 14.) 

This is how I finally figured out how to wear white pants….

What I tried: 

Granny Panties 

When I wore white pants with white full coverage underwear you could see the underwear in all of its glory. So I tried beige/nude underwear, and those still gave panty lines. Results: Nope. 

Thongs 

Some friends said they wore their white pants with thongs, but  when I tried that you could see my cellulite. That wasn’t exactly the look that I was going for and I am also getting way too old and curmudgeonly to submit to being uncomfortable at the same time that I am worrying about a whale tale hanging out every time I need to bend over to help one of my kids tie their shoes. Results: Nope. 

Body Shapers

I tried wearing some of my more expensive brand-name body shapers under the white pants (the kind that look like half a pair of panty hose and end at the thigh), but not only were they really uncomfortable because I was being squeezed in a corset, but you could still see a panty line and you could tell where they ended on my thighs. Results: Yeah, nope.

Going Commando

Not happening. I have ridiculously sensitive skin. I cannot even handle most laundry detergents touching me without breaking out into hives. I actually do need that extra layer of cotton protection because, as you can probably imagine, especially sensitive areas are, well, especially sensitive. Besides that, we were headed to a graduation party being held at a church. There was no way I was going in there without undergarments. 

Panty Hose 

I cut the feet off a pair of panty hose and tried that too. Surprisingly, that gave some of the best results. The only problem was that they weren’t quite thick enough, so you could still see a bit of a panty line. And if I was going to be wearing all of that business under my pants anyway, then I wasn’t going to bother with a thong for all of the other reasons I just listed. 

The panty hose gave me the idea for the one thing that finally did work…

White footless leggings!

 I put a pair of thin white footless leggings like these on top of full coverage underwear.  

I no longer had a visible panty line or completely see-through pants. 

This is not a trick I would recommend in mid-August in 98% humidity at an outdoor cook-out, obviously. But right now it is May. The day I wore this outfit to a graduation party it was 70 degrees and mild.  

And I FINALLY wore white pants in public. 

Mission accomplished.