What does inseam mean? A guide to jeans leg length in Australia

If you have ever bought jeans online and found the leg swimming around your ankle, you have met the inseam. It is the one number that decides whether jeans fit your legs, and most of us have never been told what it is.

What does inseam mean on jeans?

Inseam is the length of the inside leg seam, from the crotch to the bottom of the hem. It is not the outside of the leg and it is not your height.

Waist size tells you whether jeans will do up. Inseam tells you whether they will fit.

How do I measure my inseam at home?

Lay a pair of jeans that already fit you well in the leg flat on the floor, find where the four seams meet at the crotch, and measure straight down the inside seam to the hem. That number, in inches, is your inseam.

Use a pair you actually like the length of. If everything you own has been taken up, measure a hemmed pair, because that is the length that works on you.

What is a standard inseam length?

There is no single standard. For men, regular means a 32 inch inseam, with short at around 30 and long at 34. For women, regular covers anything from 30 to 32 inches, petite sits around 26 to 28, and tall starts at 32.

So the same number means different things depending on which rack you are standing at.

What is the average inseam in Australia?

The average Australian inseam works out to roughly 31 inches for men and roughly 28.5 inches for women. Nobody publishes a national inseam figure, so this is an estimate: the Australian Bureau of Statistics puts average height at 175.6 cm for men and 161.8 cm for women, and inseam typically runs at about 45% of height.

Now compare that with what the shops call regular. Men's regular is 32 inches, about an inch longer than the average Australian man's leg. Women's regular is 30 to 32 inches, up to three and a half inches longer than the average Australian woman's.

If your jeans are always too long, you are not unusually short. You are somewhere near the middle of the population, buying a length that was set above it.

These are estimates, not laws. Two people the same height can have very different leg-to-torso proportions, which is why you measure rather than guess.

Why do petite jeans fit me in a small size but not a bigger one?

Many petite and short ranges make the inseam longer as the waist size goes up. So a size 8 petite might be a true short length while a size 14 petite from the same brand is close to regular. Being shorter and being a bigger size are two separate things, and a range that grades the leg up with the waist leaves out everyone who is both.

DEVENI keeps the inseam the same across every size. A women's XL in Petite Length has the same leg length as an XS, and a men's 36 waist in Short Length has the same leg length as a 28.

Does hemming fix jeans that are too long?

Hemming fixes the length but not the shape. Jeans are cut with the knee, the taper and the pockets in set places, so taking three inches off the bottom leaves the knee sitting above your knee and the taper starting in the wrong spot. A straight leg can start reading as an odd bootcut.

A tailor can shorten a leg. A tailor cannot move the knee.

It also costs you every time. Getting a pair of jeans taken up in Australia costs around $30, and you pay it again on every pair you buy.

What inseam lengths does DEVENI make?

Every DEVENI inseam stays the same across the full size run.

DEVENI designs from a shorter build up instead of cutting a standard pattern down, so the knee sits where your knee is and nothing needs altering when it arrives.

Short Length (men's) and Petite Length (women's) are built for anyone whose leg sits below the Australian average, which is most people who have ever paid to have jeans taken up.

Regular/Tall is the same cuts for longer legs.

The point was never that everybody needs a short jean. It was that the length should match the leg. Sometimes that is a 27. Sometimes it is a 32.

What if I am still not sure which length to buy?

Our FIT KIT takes the guesswork out of buying denim you cannot try on first, and what you pay for it comes back off your next order.

You are not a hard fit. The sizing was just never built for you.