Bottoms

Bottoms gathers the denim and the pull-on shorts Armen Clothing keeps for Homestead weather — high-rise jeans, wide legs with a cuffed hem, dark-wash cut-offs, suede-look shorts and soft knit pairs that ask nothing of a waistband.

Two ideas sit side by side here. One is denim proper: cotton with a little polyester and spandex worked in, cut high at the waist so the leg reads long, in washes from light to dark and hems left raw or turned up. The other is the easy end — elastic waists, drawstrings, a mid rise and nothing to fasten — for the hours at home, the errand run, and the walk to somewhere with air conditioning.

Rises are worth choosing deliberately. High sits at the natural waist and tucks a top in cleanly; mid sits lower and disappears under a longer shirt; low is for the knit pairs that were never meant to be noticed. Sizes run through the alpha range and the numeric denim sizes both, and each product page carries the model's height and the size she is wearing so the guesswork is smaller.

Whatever goes on top, Bottoms is the half of the outfit that has to survive a Florida afternoon.