Guide To Wearing Leggings

As soon as we realized leggings could be worn in public, our lives changed for the better. Sure, they've developed a bad rap over the years, but you'll have to pry these comfortable, versatile, and essential wardrobe staples from our cold, dead hands. Because of the (literal) flexibility dressing with leggings offers us, we’ve been known to style them in a variety of ways.

Pair them with a tunic and a blazer and you’ve instantly elevated your outfit from laid back to an HR-approved, office appropriate dress code. Throw a leather pair under a sheer maxi dress and take your look from risky to risqué. Or, of course, keep your workout leggings on and wear it with a T-shirt to brunch: It's athleisure, epitomized.

But, of course, the jury's still out on whether leggings qualify as pants, and the topic has even gotten political: local institutions have banned leggings, and they've been the linchpin of conversation about women's body politics, sexism, and religion.

Like them or not, leggings have come to mean a lot of things to a lot of people in ways that are more far-reaching than whether a pair of leather ones qualifies as a "good investment." Wherever you stand on the leggings spectrum, you can't deny the influence the garment has had on our generation. We're here to hash it out.