Casual
Epstein, Joseph
Casual POCKET CHANGE Khakis, you may not have noticed, are in crisis. Sales of casual pants for men, among which khakis predominate, have fallen off. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal...
...When I mentioned this to the class as one of a number of small but dopey errors that had cropped up in the past week's essays, I quickly saw that the sentiment in the room was on the student's side and not mine...
...Everyone but I understood that khakis could be any color in the world, puce and chartreuse included...
...This wasn't meant as a put-down, just a statement of amazement...
...I own no blue jeans...
...briefly popular, they died a well-deserved death...
...They tend to be inexpensive and durable, and can be worn with anything from T-shirts to blazers and work with nearly any color in the world...
...They all have pleats and turn-ups, as the English call cuffs...
...They were once made with a small and utterly useless belt in the back...
...In the Wall Street Journal article, mention is made of one manufacturer attempting a stain-resistant version of khakis, which sounds sensible enough...
...In 1999 a pants manufacturer turned out a Capri khaki pant for men, cut off at mid-calf...
...Sam," an old Milton Berle song had it, "you made the pants too long...
...Today it needs to be changed to, "Sam, please, I beg you, leave the pants alone...
...Army...
...Five pairs of khakis, all indubitably khaki-colored, currently hang in my closet...
...Running dog of capitalism though I am, I nonetheless worry that pants manufacturers, in their attempt to find a niche in the khaki market, will get fancier and fancier...
...they cannot be white...
...I have done this for so long that some while ago I ran into a llow I knew from high school, who remarked that I seemed to be wearing the same clothes now that I did back then...
...I'm reminded of the late Samuel Goldwyn, he of the beautifully mangled clichés ("If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you"), who was said never to carry anything in his trouser pockets lest they lose their perfect line...
...Although I have worn such trousers for fifty years, I have never called them khakis...
...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...
...If I were Secretary of ' Male Haberdashery, I would outlaw jeans for men past the age of forty...
...I can easily envision khakis with each leg a different color, ragged bottoms, epaulets on the pockets...
...Khakis have changed very little in my lifetime, usually reverting to their old, solid, boring essence...
...at least mine remained straight-legged...
...I don't believe that, during that Hieronymus-Bosch period for men's clothes, the 1970s, khakis went bellbottom...
...Would Thomas Mann...
...A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reports that they are down 11.5 percent, grossing $3.86 billion last year, while jeans have held steady, with sales of $4.94 billion...
...Comfort-fit, wide-leg, stone-washed, parboiled, or filleted, jeans on men of middle age who aren't working construction or appearing in a cowboy movie, or who don't happen to be Robert Redford, are a grave sartorial mistake...
...For a spell they were made slightly baggy...
...I should have known trouble was on the way when a student, last autumn, wrote in a composition that he had encountered a man sitting at a bar wearing white khakis...
...I myself carry in mine a quarter pound of keys, a wallet for credit cards and driver's license, a money clip, and a small silver penknife...
...Would Justice Holmes have worn jeans...
...But another, the company called Dockers, last year produced something called "Mobile Pants," also known as "cargo pants for grownups...
...A khaki-pants man—as a traditionalist or square, I prefer the word "trousers"—I worry about this...
...Meanwhile, I worry that men's pants makers, wanting to recapture their share of the market for khakis, might let their innovative urges loose and spoil a good thing...
...These trousers have seven hidden pockets, two of them with seam zippers, allowing men to stash pagers, cell phones, for all I know a smoked fish, and perhaps a pet iguana in their pants...
...I prefer to believe that Colin Powell wouldn't, but I like to think that Yasser Arafat, relaxing at home, just might have an old pair around the house that would give him that Jordache look...
...bags" is the name by which the English used sometimes to call them...
...I circled the phrase, scribbling in the margin something like, "Khakis are khaki-colored...
...I wear khakis perhaps two-hundred-fifty days of the year, corduroys on cold winter days, and some variation of black or gray pants the rest of the time...
...At various times, I have called them "wash pants" (because they could be thrown in the wash, though I now send mine to the dry cleaner), chinos (another word for khaki twill), and suntans, which is what they were called when I wore them in the U.S...
...It also happens to be accurate...
...They divest a man of seriousness...
...The word khaki is of Hindu derivation, meaning dusty or dust-colored, and khaki uniforms were first used by the British in India, though they were not part of regular British Army issue until the Boer War of 1899-1902...
Vol. 7 • July 2002 • No. 41
