You Kept Writing to Ask About Linen Pants. I Finally Found the Pair, and I Am Wearing Them Right Now.

A note from a reader whose last two letters kept bringing back the same question, so this one is the answer.

Sunday morning on my porch, in the olive pair. Tom took the picture before his coffee, which explains the angle.

I am 61 years old, and this is the first Florida summer in years that I have worn actual pants past the middle of June.

Let me back up, because some of you have been waiting for this letter.

Earlier this year I wrote about a linen top from a small coastal label called Sanibel Boutique, and a couple of weeks ago I wrote about their little tee with the buttons. Both times, something funny happened. The letters that came back were lovely, and nearly all of them asked about something I had not written about at all. Pants. Where are the linen pants, Barbara. Does the boutique make pants. I counted eleven letters asking the same thing in a single week.

I understand why. Tops are easy. You can find a decent top anywhere. It is the bottom half that ruins us in summer.

Why pants are the hard part

Every woman I know down here has the same three drawers. One with the pants that dig, one with the pants that cling, and one with the pants that looked like linen on the website and turned out to be polyester with a linen photograph on it. That last kind is the worst, because it traps the heat against your legs and then has the nerve to wrinkle anyway.

So by July, most of us give up and live in dresses, whether we feel like a dress that day or not.

When the boutique brought out a pair called the Ammora and printed 100% linen right there in the description, I ordered a pair the same afternoon, partly for myself and partly, honestly, so I could answer your letters properly.

What arrived

The Ammora is real linen, in a light summer weight, and you can tell the moment the parcel opens. Linen has a dry, cool feel that polyester has never once managed to copy. It breathes, it lets the air move, and it softens the way good cotton sheets do, a little more with every wash.

The waistband is the part I want to describe carefully, because it is the reason these work for women our age. It is wide and smocked, which means it stretches when you sit and settles when you stand. It holds everything gently in place without digging in after lunch. There is no button to strain and no zipper to negotiate. You pull them on, and that is the whole procedure.

The waistband up close. Smocked all the way around, with the two little wooden buttons that make them look chosen.

On the front sit two small wooden buttons. They do not open anything, the same trick as the buttons on that tee I wrote about, and they do the same job. They turn a comfortable pair of pants into a pair that looks like it came from a boutique, because it did.

And the leg is wide and long, so it skims. It does not cling in the heat, it does not stick to you in the car, and the fabric is woven densely enough that it does not turn see through in bright sun, which anyone who has owned cheap white pants knows is not a small thing.

They are the first pants I have owned in years that I forget I am wearing by breakfast.

→ Read about the Ammora

What I actually wear them with

The olive pair has been on me more or less constantly for three weeks. I wear them with the linen top from my first letter, which apparently was the plan all along, because the colors go together like they were cut from the same cloth. I wear them with the little tee. I wore them to dinner at the club with a white blouse and my good sandals, and a woman from my walking group stopped at the table to ask where the pants were from.

Tom's contribution, offered from behind his newspaper, was that I had finally bought pants that do not make me complain in the car. He is not wrong. That is the entire review, really, in one sentence.

Now, about the price

Mine arrived folded, with the hangtag tied on with twine. They still wrap every order by hand.

The Ammora is $69.95 right now, down from $140.00, because the boutique is clearing its summer collection as it moves online. I looked up what real linen pants cost elsewhere before writing this, because I knew you would ask. Eileen Fisher wants $178 for theirs. J.Jill wants $99. I will let you sit with those numbers for a moment, the way I did.

The reviews tell the same story mine does. 4.8 stars across 847 women, most of them our age, saying the same words over and over. Cool. Comfortable. Not clingy. Bought a second color.

And here is the number that matters if you have been reading my letters from the start. The boutique's standing offer takes 15 percent off when you buy two pieces, and it climbs up to 30 percent from there. The Ammora and the linen top I wrote about in the spring come to $110.42 together after the discount. That is both halves of a complete summer outfit for less than the Eileen Fisher pants on their own.

→ See the Ammora in your size

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you were here on the porch with me and a glass of iced tea, this is what I would say.

I would say the olive green is the one I chose and the one I would choose again. The black goes to dinner. The navy and the khaki go with every top you already own. The wine red is for the woman who wants the compliment, and the white, well. After what I confessed about white pants in my last letter, the fact that I am even considering the white pair should tell you everything about how this fabric behaves.

I would tell you the sizes run from 8 all the way to 20, that I ordered my usual size and the waistband did the rest, and that at this price the popular colors thin out quickly, because that is exactly what happened with the tee.

Eleven of you wrote to ask about linen pants. This is me writing back.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Barbara

P.S. If you do try them, learn from my mistake and add a second piece straight away for the 15 percent. The pants and a top together cost less than the department store pants alone, and the discount only grows from there. And do not wait on your color. The olive and the black are the two everyone seems to want first.