Dockers Want You to Wear the Pants

I have a dirty secret. It's not something that would normally be considered shocking, but amongst the denim heads I consider my tribe, it's akin to treason.

I hated blue jeans as a child.

Stiff, scratchy, uncomfortable - they were my pants of last resort. Through most of high school, I wore anything but jeans: khakis (this was before anyone called them chinos), fatigue pants - anything else. Since that time, I've fallen in love with raw denim, and embraced the challenge of the break in. But I have never stopped loving chinos.

You could argue that if jeans have a rebellious image, khakis and chinos have, in modern times, acquired something of a conservative, safe connotation. Dockers seeks to undo this. Kind enough to send me a couple pairs of their Alpha khakis, they are everything jeans are (or more appropriately, should be, to me), slim, modern, appealing - but I can wear them to work. And go out later and still feel like I have my edge. Embrace your inner everyman - Not Tom Hanks, but Jack Lemmon, Jimmy Stewart. Maybe your everyman is Montgomery Clift - but there are chino-ed icons out there, waiting to show you how it's done.

THIS is how it's done.

Dockers will be in Chicago Thursday April 11th and 12th to personally show you how it's done with the help of GQ executive stylist Brett Fahlgren and Chicago-based fashion stylist Naima Naito. They will show you how to wear the pants. But, you ask, where are the pants? On Thursday, from 11-6, they'll be at Pioneer Court (Michigan Ave and the River) and on Friday, from 12-7, they'll be at One Financial Place. Go hang out at the Dockers Airstream trailer, and win some pants, then wear them.

Who doesn't love an Airstream?