Polyester or Fleece

Track pants come off a warp knitter or a circular knitter.

Take the warp knit first. Yarns run down the length of the fabric and interlock diagonally. Tricot is the common version. A snag stays where it is. Team kit took the fabric up for exactly that. The first track pants were cut from it.

On a circular machine one yarn loops across the width row after row. A sweatshirt is made this way. Fleece is French terry with the loops brushed open.

Three tests separate them with the garment still on the hanger.

Pull the fabric across the leg. A warp knit gives you almost nothing. Fleece and terry stretch out under your thumbs and spring back.

Turn the waistband inside out and look at the inside face. Terry keeps its loops, fleece is fuzzy, polyester is flat and smooth.

The third test is the raw edge inside the seam allowance. Loops on a circular knit sit stacked in rows. Nothing supports a cut edge. Tricot lies flat under the same cut.

A warp-knit pant is thin. It was designed to come off over a boot at the touchline and go back on at half time. It sheds a shower, dries without a machine, and packs down to nothing. On its own in December it insulates almost nothing.

The brushed nap on a fleece pant traps air. Mills knit brushed tracksuit tricot at 180 to 260 GSM and midweight fleece at 280 to 350. A 260-gram tricot and a 280-gram fleece sit twenty grams apart on the scale.

How Fleece Is Made

A roller covered in fine wire teeth passes over the looped face and tears those loops open into a nap.

Broken fibers stand up off the surface and hold air between them.

Tearing a loop tears the yarn that formed it. Mills answer by knitting fleece heavier from the start.

The nap also wears. Loose fiber ends tangle into small knots wherever the fabric rubs against itself. Those knots catch the light differently from the flat cloth around them. On a pant the rubbing happens at the inner thigh. A fleece goes fuzzy there first.

Fabric Weight in GSM and Ounces

Fabric weight reaches a hangtag in one of two units. American blanks use ounces per square yard. Grams per square meter is the figure everywhere else. One ounce per square yard converts to 33.9 GSM.

A Champion Reverse Weave is 12 oz. Running that conversion gives 407 GSM.

Read the number and ignore the adjective beside it. The adjective moves. Royal Apparel puts midweight fleece at 7.0 to 8.0 ounces and calls anything above 8.0 heavyweight. Los Angeles Apparel labels a 10-ounce sweatpant mid-weight. The same page gives 340 GSM. One supplier's heavyweight is two ounces lighter than another supplier's midweight.

The number alone will not tell you the season. Terry and fleece overlap on the scale. On the leg they are different pants. Both are made between roughly 280 and 320 GSM. A 300-gram terry and a 300-gram fleece weigh the same. One has its loops closed. The other has been brushed open. Read the construction first and the weight second.

Within terry, 220 to 320 is the usual range. All of it is a fall pant. Terry goes into winter only with a base layer under it.

Within fleece, 280 to 350 is the midweight band. That band is a winter pant. A 320-gram fleece in October will be too warm on the mild afternoons and right on the cold ones. Above 350 the pant starts doing the work an outer layer would otherwise be doing.

Where a page prints no number, hold a Reverse Weave in one hand and the candidate in the other. A pant that feels close to it is fleece in the heavy band. A pant that feels like half of it is a terry.

Wide Legs in Cold Weather

Most of the track pant rail is cut wide. A wide leg is the hardest shape to keep warm.

Start with the trade definition of wide. A true wide leg has a leg opening equal to or wider than its knee. A tapered pant has an opening narrower than its knee.

Some brands print the opening. Champion gives 23 inches on a wide-leg fleece pant. LucidBlanks runs 18 to 22 across its size range on an open-hem sweatpant. Both brands measure around. For a leg that hangs open at the bottom, 18 to 23 is the working band. A New Jersey menswear maker, Todd Shelton, publishes 8 inches flat as the current standard on a men's pant. Doubled that is 16. The open-hem band starts at 18.

Hours Collection prints 4.5 to 5.3 for the same part of the garment. Double it and you get a nine-inch opening. A foot does not go through nine inches. A number that low belongs to a rib that stretches to let the foot past and closes again behind it.

Most pages do not say which convention they used. Double any single-digit figure before comparing it to anything.

Length comes first. The leg opening works as an intake every time you swing the leg forward. A higher hem gives the cold air less to work with. At the ankle bone a leg still reads wide from across the street.

Then decide what fills the opening. A boot shaft or a high-top fills it from below. The shoes you already own decide how wide a hem you can carry through a winter.

A ribbed cuff pulls the leg down to those nine or ten inches. It also turns a straight column into a taper. Drawstring ties and adjustable ankle straps at the hem give you the same closure without the commitment.

Measure your own calf at its widest before you order. A 23-inch hem over a 15-inch calf leaves eight inches of circumference to hang.

Waistband and Rise

In winter an elastic waist has a base layer underneath it.

Loosen the drawstring all the way and look at what is left. Buy the pair that still has slack in the band at that point.

Rise decides where the waistband sits and whether it stays there. Measure it flat from the crotch seam straight up to the top of the front waistband. Under 9 inches is a low rise. Nine to 11 is mid. Eleven and above is high.

Those bands are a cutting convention out of tailoring shops. No standards body issues them. Nathan Tailors publishes its own drafting figures and says outright that no anthropometric survey defines any of it. A brand can sit a full inch either side of the bands and still print mid rise on the page.

Nine inches and up holds its position through a day at a desk. An elastic band has nothing but tension holding it to the body. At a low rise it travels down as you move. Anything smooth underneath speeds that up.

Washing and Drying

Wash cold. Cotton yarn is held under tension from the moment it is spun and again when it is knitted. Hot water and tumbling let go of that tension. The loops draw up. The pant comes out shorter. The nap goes down with it. A hot cycle takes 3 to 5 percent off an all-cotton fleece. Cold water leaves most of the tension where it is.

Turn a fleece pant inside out before it goes in. The nap is the wear face. It sits on the inside. Turn the pant and its flat outer face takes the drum, the zippers and the buttons of everything else in the load.

Elastane loses its recovery permanently above 140 Fahrenheit. An ordinary hot wash on most machines reaches into that range.

Dry it low or hang it. A hot dryer shrinks the cotton and flattens the nap in one pass. A tricot pant hangs dry in a couple of hours.

Skip the fabric softener. By the American Cleaning Institute's own account, a positively charged surfactant attaches to the fiber and lubricates one fiber against the next. The patents filed by softener makers name the side effect in their own background sections. Reduced absorbency shows up there as the known drawback of the conventional chemistry.

Base Layers

A thin base layer under a midweight pant gets you further than a heavier pant on its own. Merino and polyester both work. For this particular job, take merino. It is warmer for its weight. It keeps insulating when damp. Damp is the condition it will be in under a fleece that holds moisture of its own. The usual arguments against merino are that it wears through and dries slowly. Neither costs you much here. The layer sits under a pant. Walking to a train will not soak a base layer through. Merino costs more. Polyester survives a hot machine. Take polyester when the budget decides it or when you wash after every wear. Cotton long johns hold the sweat against you.

The nap takes up room on the inside. Anyone planning to layer every day in a track pant that only comes in S, M and L should size up once.

Pockets

No spec sheet describes a pocket bag. Measure it off the photographs against a phone. A large one runs about 6.5 inches tall. An opening with less than that between the top edge and the bottom seam leaves a corner standing proud every time you sit down.

Depth counts for more on a wide leg. The whole panel swings away from the body at every step. Cargo styles move the pocket onto the thigh. The cloth stays flat against you there. A zip settles the sitting-down question and costs more than a plain bag. On a thin fleece you feel the stiffer edge against the hip.

Plenty of knit pants have the back pockets sewn shut. The written description carries that more often than the photograph does. Count the openings in the listing photos against the number the copy claims.

What Color to Buy

Everything below the knee on a winter pant takes contact.

Black, charcoal, washed olive and navy will take a week of city walking in November without showing it. A washed or distressed finish hides as much.

Think twice about gray marl. A marl is spun from light and dark fibers together. A walk through rain leaves a line across the hem.

Winter reverses the problem. Road salt dries to a pale line. It shows up best on the dark colors.

Road crews spread a chloride. Sodium chloride most of the time. Magnesium and calcium chloride go in with it. All three dissolve in cold water. Rinse the hem under a cold tap and the white goes.

People get the order wrong. Brush the dry crust off first. A wet salt line rubbed with a cloth goes down into the nap along with the road grit it arrived with. Grit does the staining.

Different Track Pants for Fall and Winter

Fall and winter ask for different pants. A fall morning can sit 15 or 20 degrees Fahrenheit below the afternoon. A track pant bought for fall has to work at both ends of that. A midweight terry breathes enough that you are still wearing it at two o'clock.

Once the daytime high stops climbing much past the morning low, the range collapses. Take brushed fleece in the heavier band and leave room for a layer underneath.

If you are buying one pair for both, take the fall one. A 300 GSM terry handles a cold morning once a base layer goes under it. It is still wearable at 55 degrees.

What Moves the Price

Weight you can check yourself. Heavier knit costs more per meter.

No label states cotton quality outright. Two words on the tag stand in for it. Combing runs the fiber through fine combs that sieve out anything shorter than about 21 millimeters. Ring spinning twists what is left into a finer, more even yarn. Combed ring-spun cotton has had the short fibers taken out before spinning. Short fibers work loose and pill. Where the tag says nothing, run a thumb along the thigh on the rack. The cheap version already has a slight fur on it before anyone has worn it.

Past that the money goes to things no page itemizes. Stop guessing at the breakdown. Count what the seller is willing to state. Weight in ounces or GSM. The blend. Where it was sewn. The Los Angeles Apparel listing gives all three and the hourly wage besides. A page that gives none of them leaves you nothing to check the price against.

One data point is not a price scale. One pant on the market publishes everything you would need to build one. The Los Angeles Apparel pant named under fabric weight sells for $68. It is a 10-ounce fleece cut and sewn domestically. The page gives the weight, the blend and the wage floor. Most listings print none of the three.

Where a cheaper pant prints no weight, ask about the weight. Where a costlier one prints the same weight, ask what else is in the price.

Buying Track Pants Online

Every track pant listing carries a fabric line. Find it first. Cotton percentage, polyester percentage, elastane if there is any. Two to five percent is the normal range in a knit pant. Those few percent keep the waistband and cuffs springing back.

Read the measurements before the letter on the label. Nike prints a waist and an inseam on some of its bottoms. Measure a pair you already wear from the crotch seam to the hem and shop against that figure.

Thirty inches is the regular length most American brands cut to. Land within an inch of it and regular fits you. Come in at 31 or 32 and buy the tall size, whatever your height. Nike cuts its tall bottoms two inches longer in the inseam and half an inch longer in the rise.

Reviews are worth two questions. Did it shrink. Did it pill. A spec sheet answers neither.

Questions People Ask