They will have to pry my cargo shorts off my cold, dead Irish behind.
Every few years, some fashion maven (who obviously doesn’t wear shorts) attacks the very existence of the world’s most comfortable leisure wear. What do they know?
I have been wearing cargo and regular shorts for nine months of the year for a decade or more. True, it can be shocking to roll out of the car in shorts at a New Jersey gas station and find it to be 5 degrees. But that is a small price to pay for comfort the rest of the year. When I wear long pants now, it is for a wake, wedding or Chief Al’s Birthday. It feels like wearing curtains. Hate them.
I shall be buried (or burned) in shorts. So there.
The latest attack on shorts freedom came from the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of the very rich…and Chief Al. Reporter Nicole Hong said “relationships around the country are being tested by cargo shorts, loosely cut shorts with large pockets sewn onto the sides. Men who love them say they’re comfortable and practical for summer. Detractors say they’ve been out of style for years, deriding them as bulky, uncool and just flat-out ugly. In recent days, the debate has engulfed the nation.”
Well…maybe in Hong’s nation. Not at Cobb Manor.
“Fashion historians” (whoever they are) believe cargo pants were introduced around the 1940s for military use. In the U.S. Air Force, narrow cockpits meant pilots needed easily accessible pockets on their uniforms to stow supplies during flight. British soldiers climbing or hiding in high places found pockets on cargo pants more effective than utility belts for storing ammunition.
The upper echelon of the military did not like soldiers putting their hands in their pockets, so they got the idea to move the pockets to the side of the garment and keep pockets in the back of the garment, but none in the front, according to those “fashion historians.”
Shorts exploded into mass fashion in the mid-to-late 1990s, coinciding with the popularity of teen retailers like Abercrombie and Fitch, which became famous for filling its catalogs with shirtless men wearing only cargo shorts. The pockets filled a utilitarian need as cellphones became ubiquitous.
“Those teenagers are now married, and they don’t get rid of their clothes. They don’t evolve,” said Joseph Hancock, a design and merchandising professor at Drexel University, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis about cargo pants.
Can we take anyone seriously who wrote their thesis on…cargo pants?
There is trouble ahead for my cargo shorts. The Wall Street Journal reports that sales for the mid-1990s staple have fallen for the first time in more than 10 years, according to the market research firm NPD Group.
Fashion guru (say what?) Tim Gunn said in a 2007 interview with Reuters that cargo shorts were the least fashionable item of clothing in his closet. British tabloid Daily Express called cargo shorts “a humiliation for any man over 21 and should be sold only after proof of age has been presented.”
Haters.
Many upscale golf courses have banned cargo shorts in recent years. In 2012, Michael Jordan was playing golf in cargo shorts at a Miami country club when he was asked to change his shorts, according to news reports at the time. He reportedly refused.
Michael Jordan!
Despite these hate-filled attacks, the multi-pocketed shorts have been gracing the racks in stores like Old Navy and JC Penney for years. They currently account for more than $700 million in sales in the United States. That’s much to the chagrin of GQ magazine’s style guy Mark Anthony Green, another hater.
“Cargo shorts have been the scourge of men’s fashion for decades now,” Green said. “Cargo shorts have the pockets on your thighs, so when you stuff them, it looks like you have really big thighs. Unless you’re in peak physical condition, it just is very unflattering.”
I don’t need Green’s opinion about my shorts, cargo or regular.
Durand Guion, vice president and men’s fashion director at Macy’s, told CBS news that there are more fashionable, modern cargo shorts with a slimmer fit and smaller pockets. “So, it’s really about the update to the cargo pocket short, but it will never, ever die,” Guion said.
Not at Cobb Manor. Not ever.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.