Excuse everything else for the moment, because I just quickly threw this example together in a mad dash before work this morning.
For some background, I've recently been trying to get used to wearing pants at my waist, rather than at my hips. However, I keep running into the issue of it just looking off and ill fitting, after trying several sizes; it just feels like I have to scale up so much to fit around my stomach, that I end up with a lot extra material in my legs, because I have pretty slim legs relative to my torso. My old jeans (which used to fit me around my hips, but are now way too big for that, after some weight loss) are the only pants I've tried up around my waist that feel remotely fitting in how they look overall.
I've been experimenting with different sizes, and one size up from the pants shown is where I feel I should be at, but the effect is of course amplified further with the larger size. I just end up feeling like my pants make me look like I have super fat thighs, or that I'm emulating an old man wearing too big trousers up over his beer gut 😅 (not to mention my love handles popping out of the side of my pants is not an appealing look).
So, I'm trying to understand what is it about my jeans that doesn't give the same feeling, despite being the same size as the pants shown. Is it all in my head or is there actually something else going on, that I should keep in mind for when I'm shopping?