I was pretty excited when I got these pair of pants, as I really liked the Raven leggings. (Although they are a bitch to peel off.) Unlike Monkey I’m not really a tactical girl, but he wanted me to try some functional pants to see how they would work for me.
The weather was getting warm, and I needed a pair of work pants that wouldn’t stifle me and a pair of work pants I could wear doing both my very different jobs, meaning a pair of work pants that looked presentable but I could move in. The Wyldcat pants fit my needs nicely.
The job I spend the most time on is my fiber business. My studio is in our garage, so looking cute isn’t usually a priority. I love the ease of movement; sometimes I won’t change into workout clothes to go running and run in those, and they are extremely comfortable. The pockets are really what I love. For the most part I wear leggings or yoga pants a lot, which are quite comfortable, but useless pockets wise. I usually listen to podcasts while I work, so I need to put my iPhone somewhere, and in my sports bra isn’t the most comfortable, and the cord seems to snag on everything when it’s in my work apron.
The instinctive place I put it when wearing pants is in the back pocket. I’m like a guy who keeps their wallet in their back pocket so much it shows wear in the outline of a wallet. I do that a lot wearing the Wildcat pants which is easy and convenient. But that’s not where I really like the pockets. A few months ago, I had my iPhone in the back pocket of my jeans. There was an incident where it flipped out and landed squarely in the (thankfully unused) toilet. Needless to say, it never fully recovered. The depth of the back pocket is great, but the smaller one on the side makes my phone feel pretty secure because it’s so snug against my hip.
I’m moving around a lot, and often find myself kneeling on the garage floor to do something, so I appreciate the reinforced knees, and they’ve been incorporated into the design quite nicely. The pants are easy to move in, which is the most important thing about them. I’m a Pilates instructor, and I can wear these to work without qualms. They’re presentable, and although I actually don’t move a ton while teaching, I do kneel by students or have my foot up on the reformer or cadillac while a client is working out.
The zippered gussets at the leg is a clever way to give the pants more versatility; zippered, they do have that “skinny jeans” look and feel and fit easily into boots. I actually prefer to have them unzipped, and they fit nicely over boots as well. I like a bootcut pant. The visibility of the zipper does take away a little from the smooth lines of the pants if one is thinking of them as an element in a more out about the town outfit; they’re always going to look more casual. That said, I think the majority of women will wear them zippered which solves that problem.
I think a lot of the presentation will depend on the color; the grenade green color that I have is naturally always going to look a little more casual, whereas the black version will always look a little bit more formal. It simply depends on the look one is going for.
The one issue for me is that the waist is a little loose on me compared to the hips and thighs. I think my figure is pretty average, but if I were wearing the pants super snug maybe it wouldn’t be so obvious to me. That said, I prefer that to the waist on one pair of tactical pants I have where it’s hard to get the pants over the hips.
I’m really happy with the Wyldcat pants, and now I want a pair in black! The combination of presentability with flexibility is perfect for my lifestyle. Pants that I can wear in both my jobs is not an easy thing to find; jeans wouldn’t work for teaching, but these do.
