Shortly after T Magazine published its new profile of Barbra Streisand, a Strategist Slack channel lit up with questions about the “pair of $20 pants” writer James B. Stewart says Streisand greeted him wearing. Stewart wrote that “she bought [them] online from a company called Simplicitie,” which a quick Google search revealed has no stores and less than 400 followers on Instagram, where it hasn’t posted since 2019. We wanted to — had to — know more. So, after identifying Steve Kornacki’s khakis, I set out on my next investigation as the (unofficial) reporter on Strategist’s bottoms beat.
Seeing as Simplicitie only sells two pairs of pants — a wide-leg palazzo and a cropped harem — I reached out to Stewart, Simplicitie owner Kevin Ebrahimi, and Streisand’s longtime publicist Ken Sunshine to see if they could shed light on which is her preferred style. Somewhat astonishingly, Sunshine immediately wrote back promising to look into it. It was only hours later that he (even more astonishingly) returned with an answer from Streisand herself, confirming it is the palazzo pants. “I just love them because they’re so lightweight and comfortable,” she wrote in an email. (Hers, of course, are in black.)
Simplicitie’s Ebrahimi also got back to me; apparently, the brand’s celebrity appeal came as news to him. “We don’t advertise,” he said over the phone. “I didn’t even know this had happened until you reached out. We’ve never had a celebrity wear Simplicitie before.” (That said, he told me his other brand, Kooniez, counts Julia Roberts among its customers.) When I asked him what about Simplicitie’s palazzo pants makes them more appealing than other pairs (beyond their low price), he said the pants are made entirely in the USA and that he’s sold roughly 20,000 pairs in the last eight years. The brand describes them as “breezy pants featuring a flirty-yet-functional flowy fabric for an eye-catching look.”
While Streisand’s black palazzo pants (and most of the seven other colors Simplicitie makes the style in) are currently out of stock following the brand’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, I was able to find a few pairs in three colors — mocha, gray, and brown — all of which have limited sizes. If you want them, act fast, as you already have some competition: After Streisand got back to us about the pants, her assistant followed up to ask if we can put her in touch with the brand “to purchase more of these.”
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