The Best Shorts Are Pants

In the old days, I was very anti-shorts. I could go on and on about how shorts were for children, and how the ubiquitous presence of them at all times was frequently inappropriate. And outside of the beach, or sometimes cycling, I never wore them. I seem to have had a change of heart in the last few years.


These days, I wear shorts with relative frequency if the weather is hot. I spend a lot of time with my children, so comfort is important to me, but I'll be damned if I'm leaving the house in exercise clothes and pyjamas. As a result, I've come around to the fact that a man can be well appointed in a pair of shorts. We recently discussed a new pair from L.L. Bean. Today we have an old pair in plaid madras:

I find it harder to get shorts with a good fit than pants. Length is key. For me, and 8 inch inseam is best, just above the knee. They're called shorts, so they should be, you know, short. And pockets are important, too, as in, not too many. Two in front and two in back should be plenty, just like pants. I really don't get the infatuation men seem to have with cargo pockets.If you're wearing shorts in the first place, you're probably doing something casual, in which case you probably don't need half the crap in your pockets, in which case you don't need all those pockets anyway, right?

Trickiest of all is the width of the opening. So many shorts are cut with giant openings so that they wear like drapes. I suppose they cut them this way in the name of comfort, but I've never been comfortable in clothes that fit like drapes. I like it better when they fit properly, that I find comfortable. I didn't measure this pair, but you can see they're rather trim. That's because these shorts are actually pants, or at least they were when I bought them. The madras they're made from is top notch, maybe not the bleeding kind, but good stuff from the eighties. They were, as pants, at least two inches short, but for $4.99, I saw potential. I dropped them of at the trusty tailor, who cut them down to an 8 inch inseam for an additional $5.00. It's a little trick worth knowing in the thrift world, especially since for a lot of guys plaid pants are a bit much, but plaid shorts are fine.
I requested to keep the excess cloth from the bottom. I just couldn't bear to waste that fine old madras. Maybe I'll have Ellie fashion a bow tie out of it for me...or something.