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I am looking for the perfect pants. Well, not the perfect pants for you; the perfect pants for me. Let's be real, there are no pants that are perfect for everyone. But maybe we overlap, you and I.
This is not a fashion magazine. When Perry Ferrell nasally sneered, “He doesn’t even understand fashion,” he was talking about me. So far as I can tell, fashion is a way to separate people from their money on a regular, rather than an infrequent, basis. Fashion has nothing to do with perfect pants. They just have to not look like Amazon pants that were cut out of trash bags by a toddler.
The perfect pants have enough pockets, but not too many. I posit that cargo pants are not perfect pants. Sometimes cargo pants can be perfect pants, but rarely. The perfect pants are understated and do not draw attention to the wearer. The perfect pants are made of natural fibers. The perfect pants … ahem, my perfect pants, I’ve come to discover, do not exist. I have, however, discovered a pair of nearly perfect pants: Ten Thousand’s Tactical Pants.
Just Right
Photograph: Ten Thousand
Ten Thousand Tactical Pant$128 at Ten Thousand
Ten Thousand’s Tactical Pants fit almost all of my criteria. Let’s start with the cut. They don’t look like trash bags, or balloon out like ridiculous “tablet-friendly” clothes designed to fit a full computer in your drawers. Maybe that's a low bar, but look, these days, can the bar be too low? Ten Thousand's pants are understated in the sense that they just look like, well, pants.
They have enough pockets, and they are roomy pockets, but there aren’t too many of them. Combined with a roomy (but not baggy cut), the main pockets are deep enough to hold my Fujifilm X70 camera, notebook, Earth’s best pencil, and my keys. On the side of the leg are two hidden pockets with zippers. That’s where I put my wallet, which is really just a binder clip to hold together my license, debit card, and cash.
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The rear pockets, which I don’t really use, are clever as well. They have inner zippered pockets that would also be good for holding your wallet—if you like having back problems—or whatever other valuables you carry.
One of my favorite details is the pocket knife clip at the front right pocket, which is double-stitched and reinforced so your knife clip won’t wear through.
Compromise Is Key
The Tactical Pant, like much of Ten Thousand’s clothing, was “inspired and co-created by members of the US Special Operations community.” I take “tactical” in this case to mean roughly well thought-out, useful clothing that’s also comfortable whether you’re walking around town, hiking, or working on your bus. The Tactical Pant is all these things.
I did say there was one thing that keep these from being the perfect pants, and that is the fiber composition. The Tactical Pant is 58 percent cotton, which is great, but then comes 29 percent nylon (boo), and 13 percent elastane (boo). I’d love to try the same pants without the nylon. My hunch, having tested quite a bit of clothing at this point, is that they would be just as good and less toxic, both to wear and to manufacture. Alas, you can’t have everything. In the quest for the very best pants, sometimes you have to compromise.
In the case of the Tactical Pants, I can overlook the nylon and elastane because the comfort level, durability, and pretty much everything else about these pants is damn near perfect.
