The Best Sweatpants for Men Take Lounging to an Art Form

Best Cashmere Sweatpants: Mr P. Wool and Cashmere-Blend Sweatpants

Mr P.

Wool and Cashmere-Blend Sweatpants

On the athleisure spectrum, cashmere sweatpants are 0% “ath” and 100% “leisure.” And if your first response to the above pair is “Hey, that’s a cashmere blend!”— we hear you. But hear us: The wool in this extra-soft pair of sweats from Mr Porter’s in-house line doesn’t just bring the price down. It also makes the pants a little stronger and a little warmer, keeping you even cozier as you wait out the rest of the winter, or the rest of the flight. The good people at Mr Porter (say that three times fast) also added a dropped crotch, for even more of a Sunday feeling.

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What to Look for in a Great Pair of Sweats

As with any garment, it’s important to consider the quality of the fabric, the construction involved, and, most importantly, your personal taste. Jonathan Streeks, a fashion influencer who has ID’d more hoodies than bouncers have ID’d club goers, has amassed a huge following for his endless sweats content and earned himself the title of Hoodie Detective. But his hoodie expertise extends to sweats as well.

Some old-school sweats are designed without pockets—you might be wearing yours strictly for chilling, but having a pocket to hold your phone is probably a good idea. Streeks says there are a few non-negotiables. “Sweatpants must be comfortable over long periods of time. An elastic or drawstring waistline and fabric that does not shrink after multiple wash/dry cycles is essential and guarantees the garment will fit the same for months and years.” Ari Katz, brand director of Everybody.World says sweats should be “Practical but unfussy, made from industry-challenging earth-friendly materials and with thoughtful details like deep pockets and an inside drawcord.” Eventually, the elasticity of the fabric inside the waistband will deteriorate and lose its stretch, so that drawstring will help extend the life of your sweats.

Ideally, sweatpants should be sewn with flatlock stitching. In this kind of stitching, two pieces of fabric abut each other rather than overlap, and the stitching zig-zags across the two pieces. The result is a smoother, less bulky construction..

How We Test and Review Products

Style is subjective, we know—that’s the fun of it. But we’re serious about helping our audience get dressed. Whether it’s the best white sneakers, the flyest affordable suits, or the need-to-know menswear drops of the week, GQ Recommends’ perspective is built on years of hands-on experience, an insider awareness of what’s in and what’s next, and a mission to find the best version of everything out there, at every price point.

Our staffers aren’t able to try on every single piece of clothing you read about on GQ.com (fashion moves fast these days), but we have an intimate knowledge of each brand’s strengths and know the hallmarks of quality clothing—from materials and sourcing, to craftsmanship, to sustainability efforts that aren’t just greenwashing. GQ Recommends heavily emphasizes our own editorial experience with those brands, how they make their clothes, and how those clothes have been reviewed by customers. Bottom line: GQ wouldn’t tell you to wear it if we wouldn’t.

How We Make These Picks

We make every effort to cast as wide of a net as possible, with an eye on identifying the best options across three key categories: quality, fit, and price.

To kick off the process, we enlist the GQ Recommends braintrust to vote on our contenders. Some of the folks involved have worked in retail, slinging clothes to the masses; others have toiled for small-batch menswear labels; all spend way too much time thinking about what hangs in their closets.