The dreaded Hunt Begins......

Although it is officially still winter according to the calender, the temperatures here in Toronto are anything but seasonal.  There is a palpable early spring fever in the air with temps soaring in the high teens and there is even talk of 20 in a few days.  It seems I barely had a chance to wear my full length winter coat this year, let alone gloves and hats.  The clothing shops are bursting with spring fashions and so inevitably a girl's thoughts turn to that annual elusive wardrobe essential.....the perfect "white pant"!

Ugh!

Does it exist ladies?  I know for those of you with small asses and thin legs, it does exist.  It probably does not even phase you.  But for any woman with a bit of curvature, the white pant is akin to the perfect bathing suit.  Case in point.  A couple years ago, my BFF and I set off on a mission to find the perfect white jean.  In our minds, we saw ourselves slipping into said trend with the ease of kid gloves on a freshly manicured hand.  What we got instead was an afternoon of stuffing our butts and thighs into something more like ground meat into sausage casings.  A white jean can turn an already slightly heavy leg into something that looks like a candidate for The Biggest Loser's next season.  How is this possible? 

The obvious answer is the colour.  It's not black. Or even dark denim.  It is glaring, neon, bright, flashy, in your face WHITE! And it will emphasize the tiniest of flaws on any butt or thigh, even if you do think you look pretty good in your Lululemon yoga pants.  The truth is, you almost really need to be "underweight" to pull off a tight white jean.  Not to mention you need to be at LEAST 5' 6" or taller.  My unfortunate 5' 3" body has legs to match and even if I sport a really high heel, the white jean is just not doing me any favours.

So, a compromise is in order I figure.....the white pant.  This is NOT a jean, but a perfectly cut pair of dress pants that drape ever so softly past my hip and do NOT hug my thigh, or my calves and are barely off the floor with a pair of wedge sandals.  They may or may not be lined.  They could be linen, but then you have the wrinkle issues.  Ideally they are in a mid-weight soft drapey fabric, have a flat front, a side zip perhaps and make me feel elegant and almost wispy as I stroll through the world.  They feel cool, never hot, and they hug my bottom ever so slightly, but not too tight and the real key to them looking amazing is the right undergarment.  No VPL EVER!  This in itself is a challenge to pull off.  You can't wear a bikini pantie.  You can't wear a white pantie. It has to be beige so it sort of disappears.  The goal is to look as though you are wearing nothing underneath, yet your arse cheeks appear as though they are perfectly smooth and rounded just like nature intended.  (never mind that nature blew it - the perfect pantie will fix that). 

With all this early warm weather, the hunt is on.  That white pant is out there.  I know it is.  And that brings me to size.  Sometimes, as much as we hate to do it, sometimes we have to go UP a size for this perfect white pant.  What looks awesome in black in a size 6, somehow looks too tight in white.  This only adds to the angst of the hunt.  No woman wants to go up a size.  It is an admission of failure.  A defeat.  A "godammit, I did not work out this hard for this!"  Who among us does not have a variety of sizes in our closets?  Some are the fault of the manufacturers - some just fit smaller or larger.  But most as we know are the fault of that unsolicited bread basket on the bistro table, or the three birthday cakes at work in one week, or the forgotten promise to only drink on weekends....c'mon we all know the culprits. 

But the white pant - that's where all bets are off.  It requires weeks of stellar food control, no missed workouts and often going to bed feeling a little hungry and trying to ignore it.  That is if you want them to look great.  If you will settle for OK or good, then go ahead and misbehave.  I do have a little incentive this year though.  I was in my favourite shop a couple of weeks ago and I tried on a top that was part of the new spring collection.  I tried it on with jeans as well as with a black pant and it looked good.  The shop manager and style guru came over and said, "fabulous colour on you Deb, you should see how it looks with white".  That did it.  She brought a pair of white pants over and just held them against the top and I was sold.  Now the top would never look good with anything BUT white.

So, 5 more pounds to go before the intense hunt begins.  I have to now.

I have nothing to wear with the top!