To tuck or not to tuck?

With boot-wearing season in full swing, a vigorous debate is on the rise concerning the tucking of pant legs into boots. The tucked-in look was prevalent on the fall 2010 runways in the men's collections including Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana and Michael Kors.

Enough men have been taking the style out onto the streets to generate heated discussions on fashion blogs and on Twitter. It turns out that, for men, tucking pants in boots has become as polarizing and controversial a topic as popping collars on polo shirts or rolling up pants to show the ankle. Mordechai Rubinstein, style blogger at Mister Mort, took to Twitter, blasting tuckers as "lil girls."

A tucked look from Burberry Fall 2010. Burberry

"What bothers me is how precious it is," he said in an interview. "Unless you're gardening or you're an SS officer, then it's just affected. You're protecting your precious jeans from the snow?"

True, some men are probably tucking pants in boots because they got the idea from runway images or because they want to show off their great new designer boots. What's the point of buying butt-kicking boots if they're only going to be buried under a pant leg, they theorize. But sometimes there are also more legitimate reasons to tuck.

"There is a certain prejudice in some more traditional parts of the fashion world against tucking, as being showoff-y or somehow pretentious, but to me when navigating slushy streets, tucking into your boots is a purely practical matter, that is protecting your pants from getting wet and dirty," says menswear historian Robert E. Bryan and author of the 2009 book "American Fashion Menswear."

He says the tuck recalls military and sport dress of years gone by. "In the military, with the cavalry, or even foot soldiers, pants were tucked to keep the loose fabric from getting in the way," says Mr. Bryan. "And when macho cowboys are on horseback, most either tuck, or roll up their jeans, and no one would call them pretentious, simply because they do it for practical reasons."

Even Mr. Rubinstein, the style blogger, allowed for tucking if a gentleman is wearing a nice pair of slacks. In December, Tyler Thoreson, editorial director of Gilt Man, devoted a spirited online forum to tucking, entitled "Tucking Pant Legs Into Boots: Ever Okay?" He doesn't advocate tucking, but isn't opposed to it when done in a certain way.

"If you're going to do it, you better make it look like it was an accident and not something you fussed over," Mr. Thoreson said in an interview. The pants just happening to fall into the boot rather than being neatly tucked "is that sort of serendipitous, happy accident of style effect you want to achieve."

Write to Ray A. Smith at