When a new season rolls around and new trends start to pop up, I’m usually excited to try around 80 percent of them. But the other 20 percent? I avoid them like the plague and curse the day they dared started showing up on anyone’s radar—and at the tippity top of that list used to have “bike shorts” written with red underline.
Two years ago, bike shorts were synonymous with the rise of the “Insta baddie” and felt like the least wearable concept in the world to me. Even last summer after investing in a couple of pairs, I found myself never reaching for them because they just didn’t feel right—no matter what I did or what I paired them with, they just didn’t look flattering. Lo and behold, all it took was a glorious pair of Amazon bike shorts to completely change my mind.
After seeing an endless stream of bike short inspiration pictures on my Instagram feed, I realized what my problem might be: all of the bike shorts I was wearing were just too long. The seven-inch, standard inseam hugged my short thighs in all the wrong ways, and I needed a version that was a couple of inches shorter if I stood a chance at pulling off the summer version of leggings so many swear by. The problem? All of the pairs that the people I followed swear by cost upward of $60, something I simply wasn’t willing to shell out on a piece that was still such a gamble.
In a stroke of genius, a thought hit me: maybe the Amazon company that made my all-time favorite leggings also sold bike shorts in the same buttery-soft material. And to my luck, they did, and in the six-inch inseam I had been hoping for—and at less than $20, it was an immediate purchase.
Fresh out of the package, I knew I was in for a treat because the shorts were in fact the same material as my beloved Lululemon dupe leggings. They’re just the right thickness and the softness of pairs that usually cost four times the price. When I put them on, I knew I had found exactly what I was looking for: they hit me at a part of my leg that felt infinitely more flattering, and the material wasn’t too compressing.
I styled them in the most comfortable and basic of ways, with oversized tees and sweatshirts, and it’s become my everyday, work-from-home uniform. I feel cool and laid-back and slightly more put-together than I do in my go-to running shorts, and I’ve completely fallen in love with them. I ended up ordering—and this is not an exaggeration—four more pairs so I had more options throughout the week.
I try to designate certain clothes for working out versus lounging, so I dedicated two pairs specifically to my workouts, and they performed great for that too. They didn’t slip or slide whatsoever and kept up with both running and HIIT workouts.
Of all of the pieces I’ve found on Amazon this year, these are the ones I’d rank as #1.
I’ve never felt the need to buy anything in so many colors in my life, but I still find that every time I go to do my laundry, I’ve gone through every pair. If I’m not at the office, I’m wearing these, and I know I’m going to be grateful for them all summer long. Trust me: you can skip the cult-favorite investments and go for these instead.
