The billboard with a message from Eric Adams asking people to stop wearing pants sagging below the waistline. (AP)

New York, April 2: Low-slung trousers give their wearers a bad image, according to a US lawmaker who is behind an advertising campaign telling people to “raise your pants”.

Eric Adams, a New York state senator, who has initiated the $2,000 Stop The Sag campaign showing two men displaying more of their underwear than their jeans, may not be aware he could strike a chord among the culture police in India.

Adams is calling for the end of the sagging trend that has become popular in men’s fashion. It’s a call the Shri Ram Sena of Pramod Muthalik might pick up, having earlier earned their spikes by beating up women at pubs.

Colleges and schools in Bengal that have made a name for themselves by banning one dress or another could find a role model in Adams, though fashionistas are not amused.

“As long as you are not showing your private parts, it should be okay,” said Dev of designer duo Dev R Nil.

Not “okay” with Adams, who said in an online message posted on YouTube: “You can raise your level of respect if you raise your pants.”

The politician, a retired police captain, is the latest to speak out on the trend. He follows Larry Platt, an American Idol performer who became an Internet sensation earlier this year with his song Pants on the Ground.

Even President Barack Obama has previously said: “Some people might not want to see your underwear. I’m one of them.”

Sorry, President, you’re over 40 and “only people above the age of 40 go for mid-rise”, according to Vijay Dugar, distributor of Levi’s in Bengal. “As long as they (men) have their boxers on, it should not bother anybody,” he added.

It does bother, though, because the New York campaign follows a similar one in Dallas, where officials embarked on a Pull Your Pants Up campaign in 2007, while in St Petersburg, Florida, a high school principal ordered thousands of plastic zip ties to help students pull up their trousers.

Adams said he had had enough after watching a train passenger who wore a particularly low-slung pair of trousers.

“Everyone on the train was looking at him and shaking their heads,” he said. “And no one said anything to correct it.”

The low-slung trousers trend is adapted from the unbelted and sometimes oversized look of prison uniforms, according to Mark-Evan Blackman, who heads the menswear department at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology.

Initially seen as invoking street credibility, the style has spread from inner cities to suburban shopping centres and school classrooms.

Some communities have tried outlawing saggy slacks, though such regulations have often faced questions about their legality.

Adams says he doesn’t aim to legislate, just educate.

“I don’t want to criminalise young people being young people,” he said. “I’m trying to make sure we stand up and correct the behaviour.”

Had he taken on the task in India, he would’ve had to fight much more than boxer punch. “Indians are more ‘cultured’ and have a different kind of ‘hot’ couture,” said funny man Mir. “In summer, an Indian man can, even when among women, take off his singlet at home and sit only in his lungi.”

He didn’t say if the lungi should be folded up to the mini-skirt line.

Designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee, who knows something about lines, said: “To each their own. I don’t believe in moral policing.”

Some of the low-slung style’s partisans aren’t sure it merits a politician’s attention.

“I think there’s other things going on besides someone’s pants being low,” said James Scott, 27, of Brooklyn, his jeans sitting jauntily low on his hips.

A “Pull up your pants” campaign in Bengal might face a much more fierce opposition than that. It would be seen as asking people to work.