These days, only a growing teenager can get away with narrow jeans with big turn-ups as he is still growing and, as his mother might say, "You’ll need that extra few inches of hem a few years down the road.” Otherwise, if you're over the age of 20 and you feel you must sport a large turn-up (two inches max) then the jean has to be a good 17 inches wide at the bottom and must be proper selvedge such as Lee Archive, Levi's replica 501, Sugar Cane or Edwin or a painter’s pant. That said, on a selvedge jean, far preferable is the quarter-inch tiny turn-up that never seems to look as if one is trying too hard, which is what it’s all about. According to Beau Brummel, the "severest mortification that a gentleman could incur was to attract observation in the street by his outward appearance". Vis-à-vis, looking like a fashion victim is never that clever. Turn-ups on skinny jeans are just wrong and don’t do the wearer any favours at all. In fact, skinny jeans on men should be avoided like chlamydia, as they look really rather silly and are entirely unnecessary in this world of abundant cloth.
As for the more formal suit trousers, it has been said that the trend was initiated by Edward VII, while still the Prince Of Wales, who, in the late 1890s, turned his trousers up while at race meets to avoid getting mud on his trouser bottoms. The English aristocrats - suckers for any fad started by a Royal - followed suit and, much to the future king’s bewilderment, copied his pragmatic affectation. Similarly, legend has it that the "cuff" fashion began in the US in 1905 after an English nobleman, on his way to a wedding in the rain in New York, turned his trousers up to avoid getting them wet and forgot to let them down. Fashion conscious New Yorkers thought this a remarkable new craze and the fashion for "cuffs" began.
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You could say that the style was initiated by those who couldn’t give a damn – Princes and poor workers - and popularised by those who could – wannabe toffs and fashion victims.
The fad was further exacerbated in the Twenties after an enterprising Savile Row tailor conceived the trouser pleat, which was a superior invention that gave one’s trouser the then-fashionable volume. Subsequently, the future Duke Of Windsor adopted them with turn-ups purely because pleated trousers hang better with cuffs, while students at Oxford began wearing baggy trousers, AKA Oxford bags (some 26-inches at the bottom) with turn-ups over their fashionable plus fours, which were banned in class. The look caught on, especially in the US, after visiting Ivy League students checked the look and loved it. And so the trend for fuller trousers continued and, with it, the turn-up that, essential on any pleated trouser, simply allows the pant to hang well and drape nicely over one’s shoe.
