Okay chaps, where do you wear your duds? Hanging low or tucked up nice and tight under your armpits? Well, is seems where you chose to belt up on your body is reflective of your age. Yup, this is it, the latest in ground breaking (or belt buckling) research.

Here's the waistband timeline...

Teens and twenties
Not surprisingly the younguns opt for a super-slung look, with the waist band plummeting below the hips at the age of 16, you know, letting the crotch of their jeans dangle around their knees, with several inches of underpant on show. Now this is actually a skill in itself - there has to be a real art to showing just enough of your grundies without letting go, and getting full trouser slippage. They must practice for hours to perfect that Pingu gait.

Clearly this little fella needs to put some hours in...

Then waistbands slowly begin to creep up an inch or two as a man kisses goodbye to his teenage years behind and enters the workplace.  And by the age 27, a chap of average build will probably wear his waistband actually around his waist (well done).  

Thirties and forties
It's at 39 when it begins to rise again, and it's estimated by the age of 45 it will be riding higher, at least two inches above.

Fifties
Then, this figure increases greatly past 50 (which is indecently master of the high waistband himself, Simon Cowell's current age) to a peak of five inches by 57. To put this is context, this is just seven inches below the armpits. Sexy...I'm not joking - I love a man with this trews pulled high.

Sixties and seventies
Here's where change occurs, as men reach 60 their waists shrink, allowing them to lower the height of their trousers. And By 65, waistbands are three inches above the natural waist, and by 75 only an inch.

...is it me or is this really in-depth? Well you can thank Paul Baldwin, director of menswear at Debenhams for all the leg work.

Oh, and there are a couple of exceptions, men with a paunch or 'love' as I like to call it,  are known as Under And Over Achievers-because they wear their trousers above their true waist if they can, and below if they cannot.

So, does it measure up - chaps, were are you wearing yours?