What Girls Are Wearing to Move In: The Leggings That Get It Right

The Legging Is the Most Important Garment in My Daughter’s Wardrobe

I have a seven-year-old daughter, and I can tell you with some confidence that the most important garment in her wardrobe is not the dress she puts on for a birthday party, and it is not the coat she wears in the winter. It is the legging. Specifically, it is the legging she puts on the moment she gets home from school, the legging she wears to gymnastics, the legging she wears when she is climbing a tree, the legging she wears when she is lying on the floor reading a book, the legging she wears when she is making a fuss about something and needs to feel comfortable while she is doing it.

The legging is, in our house, the foundation garment, and the wrong pair of leggings will absolutely ruin an afternoon. That is why I pay more attention now to the leggings girls actually move in than to the pairs that look best online.

I have, over the past four years, tried more pairs of girls’ leggings than I can comfortably count. I have tried the cheap ones from the discount store, which lasted three months. I have tried the mid-range ones from the kids’ department stores, which lasted six. I have tried the expensive ones from the heritage brands, which were beautiful and fragile. I have, in short, run the gamut, and I have come to a few conclusions about what makes a girl’s legging actually work.

What “Getting It Right” Means for a Girl’s Legging

When I say a legging is getting it right, I mean a few specific things. I mean a waistband that stays up without pinching. I mean a fabric that stretches when she stretches and recovers when she stops. I mean a fabric that does not go see-through at the knee when she bends. I mean a fabric that does not pill after a few washes. I mean a length that hits at the ankle, not halfway down the shin, and that does not require constant tugging. I mean a color that is not so dark it shows every piece of lint, and not so light it shows every piece of grass. I mean, in short, a legging that she can put on and forget about, and that I can put in the wash and forget about.

These are not, in retrospect, complicated requirements. They are, however, requirements that the majority of girls’ leggings on the market do not meet. The cheap ones meet maybe two of them. The mid-range ones meet maybe four. The expensive ones, which are usually the most beautiful, meet maybe three of them, because they are designed for the photograph, not for the girl.

Over the past year, I have paid closer attention to which brands are meeting the full list. The list is not, in the end, that long. The brands that meet it are mostly the brands treating kids activewear as its own performance category, not as a smaller version of adult gym clothes. The legging I have bought most often is not dramatic. It stays up, does not turn sheer, does not pill quickly, washes well, and fits the way the size chart says it should. That sounds boring until you have replaced three failed pairs in one school year.

The Waistband Conversation Nobody Has Out Loud

The waistband conversation is one that I think most parents have, and that most parents do not have out loud. The waistband is, on a girl’s legging, the single most important feature, and it is also the single most variable feature. I have bought leggings with waistbands that pinched my daughter so much she would not wear them. I have bought leggings with waistbands that were so loose they slid down within an hour. I have bought leggings with waistbands that left red marks on her hips by the end of the school day. I have bought leggings with waistbands that were so high they came up to her ribs, which she hated, and that were so low they showed her tummy when she bent over, which I hated.

The right waistband, on a girl’s legging, is wide, soft, and sits at the natural waist. It does not pinch. It does not dig. It does not leave marks. It does not slide down. It does not require constant adjustment. It is, in the technical sense, a wide elastic waistband covered in the same fabric as the rest of the legging, and it is, in the practical sense, the difference between a legging my daughter will wear and a legging she will not.

The pair that finally solved this problem gets the waistband right. It is wide, soft, the right height, and steady without feeling tight. My daughter has worn the same pair roughly three times a week for the past two months, and the waistband has not lost its shape or its grip. That is a practical achievement in girls’ leggings, and it is the reason I bought the same style in another color.

How I Check a Pair Before the First Wear

Before a new pair becomes school-day clothing, I do a quick pre-wear check. I stretch the fabric in more than one direction. I look at it in good light. I check the inside surface for early pilling. I look at the seam line and the width of the waistband. I hold the legging against my daughter’s inside leg measurement so I am not guessing from the size label alone. If the pair looks weak in any of those places, I send it back before it becomes another half-worn mistake.

That check is mostly about what the fabric does not do. It does not go thin when stretched. It does not show the white of my palm through the weave. It does not have a visible nap that looks ready to pill on the first wash. It does not feel slick or plasticky in a way that will turn clammy when she sweats. In girls’ leggings, the right technical fabric costs more than a basic cotton blend, but it usually offers better value because it keeps its stretch and coverage longer.

The pair my daughter has worn most this fall passes those checks cleanly. The fabric is light, stretches in four directions, and stays opaque when she bends. It does not have a plasticky hand feel, and it has not developed the fuzzy surface I associate with cheaper leggings. In a garment that gets worn to school, gymnastics, the park, and sometimes the couch, that combination matters more than a bright print.

The Color Question, Answered Honestly

The color question, in girls’ leggings, is one I have spent a lot of time thinking about. The colors that look good in the photos are not, in my experience, the colors that survive a school year. The pastel pink goes gray after a few washes. The bright blue fades. The black shows every piece of lint. The white shows every piece of grass. The prints, which I have a weakness for, are usually printed on a fabric that does not wear as well as a solid.

The colors that have worked best for my daughter are the slightly muted, slightly grown-up colors. The dark navy that has not faded. The deep charcoal that does not show lint. The forest green that has, against my expectations, become her favorite. The off-black that is, in fact, a very dark gray. The dusty rose that has not, against my expectations, gone pink in the wash.

The color palette, on the girls’ side, at the brand I buy from most, stays mostly in this muted space. The colors are not flashy, and they are not built around one season. They feel closer to a thoughtful activewear palette than a novelty kidswear rack. My daughter, at seven, has started to have opinions about what she wears, and those opinions are more grown-up than they were a year ago. The palette gives her options that feel mature without making her look like she is wearing a parent’s hand-me-down.

Sizing for Girls Who Are Made of Joints and Energy

My daughter is, like most seven-year-olds, made mostly of joints and energy. She is small for her age, which means the size 7 fits her lengthwise, but she has the legs of a future long-distance runner, which means the size 7 is, lengthwise, a little too short. The size 8 is, lengthwise, a little too long. The size 7 in a stretchy fabric is, in the end, the right answer, because the stretchy fabric accommodates the length issue, and the size 7 fits her everywhere else.

Sizing for girls who are made of joints and energy is, I think, one of the more under-discussed challenges in kidswear. The size charts are based on average children, and average children are, in the strict sense, not a thing. The girl who is tall and skinny needs a longer leg and a narrower waist. The girl who is short and round needs a shorter leg and a wider waist. The girl who is in between needs the in-between, which is, by definition, not on the size chart.

The brands that are getting this right, in my view, are the brands that have refined the fit block over many iterations and offer sizes that reflect the range of children’s bodies. The sizing, in my experience, at the brand I buy from most, is true to size. The size my daughter is in, in their legging, is the size she is in. The fit is close, the length is right, and the waistband sits at the right height. That is the answer I want from a girl’s legging.

The Leggings That Stayed in the Weekly Rotation

There is a specific pair of leggings, in the dusty blue color, that my daughter has worn, in my estimate, at least fifty times since September. They have been washed at least twenty-five times. They have been worn to school, to gymnastics, to the park, to bed on a sick day, and to a birthday party where she changed out of them at the last minute. They have been dragged across playgrounds, climbed in, jumped in, and generally treated as the foundation garment they are. They have not pilled. They have not gone see-through. They have not bagged at the knee. They have not lost their color. The waistband is still doing its job. The fabric is still doing its job. The seams are still doing their job. The leggings are, in short, the right legging.

I have, in the past, gone through three or four pairs of leggings in a school year. This year, I have gone through one, and I have a backup pair in the same brand, in a different color, that she has not yet needed. The economics of this are not complicated. The cheap legging, at one third the price, lasted one third as long, and the cheap legging was, in any case, less good. The legging I keep buying is, in the long run, the cheaper option, and it is, in any case, the better option.

If you are the parent of a girl who lives in leggings, and you are tired of buying the cheap ones that last three months, and you are tired of buying the expensive ones that fall apart by Christmas, and you want a pair that will do its job for the entire school year, I would, with some conviction, suggest the brand I have been buying from. The proof is in the fact that the same pair has made it through fifty wears without losing its shape, its color, or its ability to do its job. That is, in the end, the only test that matters.