Bonobos

This weekend was my maiden voyage to the Hamptons. Ok, ok. I get it.

Saturday night I attended a birthday party in Watermill. There, among other people, I met Julia Allison, who had nice thing to say about my floral print Bonobos. I had not met Julia before - though I had seen her column on dating in Time Out New York way back when there was a story on Bonobos in that magazine.

Imagine my surprise when, the following day, the below photo turns up on the iPhone of one of the girls I was staying with in the Hamptons. Julia put the picture up on her website - which is called NonSociety. Click here to check it out.

Julia is a self-made internet celebrity, on the cover of WIRED magazine this month. I admire what she’s doing - using the internet in a clever and creative way to build a business. At Bonobos, we are trying to do the same thing. Except we make great trousers.
I did introduce Julia to the research of John Gottman. I figured as one of New York’s premiere dating advisors and relationship specialists, she ought to know about things like the four horseman of a relationship and the 5:1 ratio praise to criticism. Brian and I talk about Gottman often. As single guys, we are experts on relationships.

If you don’t get to see Julia’s site, this is what she had to say about my Bonobos:

HOW AWESOME ARE HIS PANTS?? I’m a big fan of men who have the balls to wear outfits like that.

These pants were so loud I was a bit nervous about wearing them. But pairing them with a simple button down and a black tie silk belt calmed me down.

Should we make more floral print Bonobos? Would you buy them? We have a handful of samples at the Bonobos loft which we may be putting on our website before long.

Before I go, two more happy snaps from the Hamptons. Fantastic party. Fantastic weekend.

Now back to the Monday grind in Manhattan.

Football season is so close, you can taste it. School is not back in session, but it’s time to buy your supplies. The heat of summer is still with us, but the evenings simmer down as we slowly creep toward what we at Bonobos like to call FWS. Fall. Winter. Spring.

We’ll miss day games at Wrigley, but that’s about it.

So what do you wear as the sweaty summer days make way for the decrescendo of balmy to cool August evenings? We have the answer. Dress well this late summer/early fall with what we at Bonobos call late summer stretch wool.

We took some exceptionally lightweight stretch wool, and we lined it with silk. Introducing the Jive Cats and the Jackson Brownes. The end of summer. The end of sweaty pants on hot summer nights. The beginning of you thinking about how to transition from one season to another in style.

(This message is brought to you by our the slightly more supple brethren of these two beautiful brown trousers, the latest in our gray wool line - the G5s. Not quite as lightweight, but not far behind, our customers are already picking these up in droves and wearing them in the summertime with a smile. We thought we’d wake you up when September ends on these… but who are we to say when you should wear em?)

After the success of the inaugural Bonobos contest, we decided to up the ante. Over a hundred of you threw out names for a shot at a pair of navy shorts and Bonobos fame. So, we made a second call for creativity. The part wool, part cashmere, and all luxury Dark and Stormys are the jackpot of pants. With the stakes so high (we can’t just give away a pant so dear to our hearts) the challenge had to be tougher.

We found many Bonobos lovers could throw out names for our inspiring pants, but could anyone craft a story as memorable as these Dark and Stormys?

While most of you folded, a few tried. Some were way off target (MRG’s pre-disco ritual) and others were quite convincing (Roby, Ronnie, and Sparky). But, it was ultimately Marcus Coe who caught the essence of these pants best. And for that, he will forever enjoy his new Dark and Stormys. And the rest of us can forever enjoy his story (at least until the pants sell out):

Bermudian winters can bear faint resemblance to the lapis skies and gin-clear waters of summer. Storms roll in, bringing a touch of soggy reality to this fish-hook shaped island in the Atlantic. But no matter, you and your cloudy concoction of Black Seal and Barritt’s Ginger Beer simply change venues: from the front to the back porch, perhaps, where the covered deck allows an afternoon of daring backgammon victories.

Deceptively simple yet layered with intrigue, you and your drink are cosmic brethren. You appreciate the gusto of the occasional hurricane and realize that one must embrace challenge. An endless parade of perfect beach days and pina coladas is not interesting. Weathering 60 knot gusts on the bow of your sloop is interesting. An island that used to be populated only by wild hogs is interesting. Your pants are interesting.

The Dark N Stormy, a buttery concoction of burnished-teak-colored wool with the soft hand of cashmere, is here to help you amble through the cooler, damper climes of the sun’s retreat. A pant to help you weather its namesake, it is perfect for cocktails on your deck overlooking Harrington Sound, a Bloody Caesar at homecoming or grand rounds at Man’s Best Hospital. An orange silk liner keeps your pockets happy, and the herringbone weave encourages admirers to take a second look. My, there’s a lot of depth to that fabric.

You know there’s no reason to mourn the passing of the height of summer. Armed only with a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a slicker, you grab your pants and head out into the storm.

Jealous of Mr. Coe’s new pants? We’ve had so much fun reading your Bonobos-inspired stories, we can assure you another contest will be coming soon. If you can’t wait, we don’t blame you - we’ll let you buy them here.

In light of how popular the “name the Navy Shorts” competition was on our blog, we’re launching competition #2 for all you aspirant scribes out there.

Everyone knows that the Dark N Stormy is one of the greatest beverages known to mankind. Nothing like some Zacapa Centenario expertly mixed with Bermudian ginger beer. A lime wedge on top adds the final touch. Best consumed at the tee on hole #5 at the world-renowned Mid-Ocean Club.

The Bonobos Dark N Stormy resembles this classic drink in a number of ways.

- It’s super smooth: a warm milk chocolate brown with a generous amount of cashmere

- It’s lined in brown and orange: not too dissimilar to the color a great aged rum takes on

- It’s versatile: at the bar, at a party, or in the boardroom, you can drink one anywhere… and wear these everywhere

- They’re of a rarefied air: just as ginger beer and Gosling’s black rum are hard to find; these Dark N Stormy’s won’t stick around for long, just check out what happens to most Bonobos.

We need the new description for these Dark N Stormy’s. 250-500 words that will go right up on the product page. The winning entry will incorporate facts about the color and fabric, but will bring the pant a personality all its own. Winning entry gets a pair. Experience tells us that existing customers are able to wax nostalgic about Bonobos most effectively. So get involved! Post right here in the comments section.

Best of luck and, by the way, the winning entry may make no entry of rum. Or maybe it will?

189 comments later, we are excited to announce a winner to last week’s navy shorts competition.

First, the honorable mentions:

Jack McDonald for “Ian McGuires”. Rick Wittenbraker for “Poop Deck”. Will Hutchinson for “Navy S.T.E.A.L.S”. Mason for “the Ben Franklins”. Tod Nocella for “The Spartans” - which accurately describes these shorts. And AJ Crane for “The Pool Boys” - the witty, terse prose which which had us rolling so much so that it bears repeating:

In a job where great buns are a prerequisite, a good pair of shorts is second only to a long pool net when it comes to success. The fit of these shorts will guarantee a good show for all the babes at the pool while the color will protect you against embarrassing splashes to the crotch.

But we don’t fancy ourselves handsome, womanizing, vapid summer lovers - it just didn’t fit. Ah well.

So who is the winner? 1st place - M. Dugan, of Rockville, Maryland, perhaps? Your submission was our favorite. We are naming the shorts the Navy Bleus and using your write up on the Monnets as the brand identity. Below is Mr. Dugan’s original submission.

The Monnets (As in EU founding father Jean Monnet)

With his country in mortal peril, Jean Monnet rose to the occasion. Although his audacious plan to merge the nations of France and Britain in the opening days of WWII simply ran out of time, Monnet spent the rest of the Second Great War as he did the first- coordinating Allied production and organizing vital supply shipments across the Atlantic.

Monnet also knew a more relaxed side of life, traveling the world selling his family’s brand of premium Cognac: a one deal at a time re-education against the mass market mark-up behemoths of the day. Charming professionally and socially, he would live happily ever after running off with a beautiful Italian painter 19 years his junior.

Thus, a salute of purposeful navy bleu yet able to compromise with a relaxed lining in a pair of Bonobos shorts that will put everyone enough at ease to negotiate a European Union.

Saving the world at sea, high adventure in finance and trade, absconding to Switzerland- make waves behind the scenes with your Monnets.

 

We loved the write up, but thought that Navy Bleus, from the story itself, was a better name for the shorts than the Monnets. Today we ate our cake, and had it too.

Our navy shorts need a name. Can you help? If you can, you will gain notoriety at Bonobos as one of the first non team members to name one of our styles.

A winning answer does not need to include a full Bonobos write-up, but we will take a full write-up into consideration to determine the winner.

What better way to procrastinate on a Friday at work?

We made navy shorts in response to you. Many of you saw our razzle mcdazzle line of shorts, intense creations like the aquemini and the jungle kings, and said you could not pull them off. These navy shorts are here for you. Solid. Navy.

I am not going to say much more about them lest I give you any ideas.

Submit your answer as a comment to this blog. Feel free to comment on names (and write-ups?) on the blog which you do or do not like. By Monday, we will choose a winner.

It goes without saying that the winner will be getting a free pair of the shorts that he (or she?) named.

Navy shorts. Because only one style of Bonobos can be called what it is, and that style is called the khakis.

Bonobos khakis have arrived.

Like a Shakesperean rose, they are just as sweet as they would be by “any other name.” So for once, we call a spade a spade.

We have dabbled in khakis before. The khakithals lasted a few weeks. The series a lasted a few days. We hope that these last a bit longer.

These khakis are a medium weight stretch cotton - 98% cotton, 2% lycra. The color is classic khaki, a rich tan/beige hue with a hint of golden brown goodness.

We are excited to hear from the peanut gallery. Click through and check out the detailed photography. What do you think?

What other colors would you like to see from us? We have a whole bunch of new twills coming out, and we hope that we guessed right. We are doing more navy, like the midnight blues. For the moment we have plenty of brown, in the form of the brothers grinn. What else would you like to see?

When we originally conceived of the G5s, we were targeting October 2008. Then we pre-sold out of the size 32 G4s. And we decided maybe it was time to start a series. Not a series like in the movie business, where sad sequels tarnish the memory of the original – except for Police Academy II and Beverly Hills Cop II, which were amazing. Rather we were hoping to launch a series akin to the European automotive tradition. With the G-series grey wool trousers, we hope to emulate the success of Bavarian Motor Works’ legendary 3-series – innovation, value, performance, precision; German know-how.

We expect to innovate with each new G rendition. And we hope to attract long term, devoted followers. The G5 features a double-faced, super-smooth stretch wool, and a pure silk liner in assorted contrasting pastels. A companion to the G4s, not a substitute.

Bonobos - The Ultimate Trouser Machine.

Bonobos belts are back. Check out the new baby blue bar code, turqs and caicos, black and pink with silver, and pastel bias to see what we are up to. Too funky for you? Staple green, black, and navy are in the house.

The idea behind our belts

We love tie silk, but we don’t love wearing ties. These days, it seems weddings are the only time we really need ‘em (except for those of us who work at Alliance Bernstein - the formidable Manhattan asset management firm which clings to this neckwear tradition as ivy clings to brick in New Haven). We decided silk belts were a great way to marry our interest in providing you with excellent wardrobe staple and finding more ways to showcase the awesome silks we have been buying. We didn’t invent the silk belt, but we’ve done our best to imbue the Bonobos rendition with our signature style.

The pitch

And so we offer you, in very limited editions, premium tie silk wrapped around a durable backing, in a colorful array of styles and colors. They will move quickly, you should too.

The sizes

Our belts are offered in Medium and Large.

Medium - designed to fit waist sizes from 28-34. actual length of the silk belt not including the buckle is 41″

Large - designed to fit waist sizes from 34-38. actual length of the silk belt not including the buckle is 45″

Guys in sizes 33 and 34 can also wear size Large, but we’d suggest Medium will offer a cleaner fit. it boils down to personal preference…

The look

A leather belt should always match your shoes. However, with colorful belts in silk, the rule is cast away in favor of creativity and ingenuity. We suggest you wear these belts with all of your favorite shorts and trousers, and pair them with your favorite footwear - sandals, flops, sneakers, white wing tips…. it’s up to you. Our silk belts are not a formal look, more of a cocktail look.

The label

We stitched our label on the inside of the belts near the buckles, where we think it will best remain hidden from view. However, if you prefer to show the world where your belt was made, feel free to wear it inside out and show off the Bonobos label.

I started wearing pants when I hit puberty, which was the 7th grade for me. I’m twenty-three now, so it’s been about 11 years that I’ve been dealing with my abomination of an ass.

I blame it on genetic anomaly, as I’m half-Chinese and half-Jewish (inasmuch as Jewishness can be considered an ethnicity in this country). It is something of a blessing that I never carry much excess fat, and I gain muscle easily - but that only really matters when I take my clothes off. On a day-to-day basis, the end result is that I look clownish in ordinary clothing.

Putting together a functional and socially acceptable wardrobe has always been a comically difficult task. My waist-to-ass and chest-to-waist ratios, if there are such things (I’m pretty sure there aren’t), are entirely incompatible with any kind of affordable clothing. Trousers that fit my waist have my ass bursting out at the seams, while trousers that fit my ass have waistlines so large that they sag down till my ass catches them.

When I was in high school, I figured I was Chinese enough to learn the art of sewing (is that racist? I think that’s racist), so for years I’ve been tailoring my own shirts. Still, I could never get the pants right. I worked my way through college, and my job required that I wear professional business attire. So I used my first paycheck to buy some nice new Banana Republic Dawson dress pants, and brought them to a tailor (who, I should mention, was both excellent and Chinese). So for about three years, I had four pairs of pants that were really perfect.

Then, during a game of IM rugby in my senior year of college, some people fell on my outstretched arm. I dislocated my shoulder and severed some important nerves in the process. The docs said my axillary nerve palsy would be permanent: that I would never regain full use of my right arm, that it would shrivel up and look deformed, and that I should probably stop exercising for a while if I didn’t want my lower body to look disproportionately large relative to my upper body.

In the end, my doctors turned out to be wrong. The palsy lasted only four months: just long enough for me to shrink two pants sizes and a shirt size, and long enough to feel like the excruciating physical therapy was futile.

So, one day, I sold all my clothes and bought a new wardrobe to fit my new body. I started regaining sensation in my right arm a week later. That was last year.

I graduated, and am currently taking some time off before law school. I’m back in my home town teaching high school Chemistry. The public school system in Florida is a comically tragic sort of thing, so I figured I could do some good here. Before me, no one in the history of my high school had ever gone to an Ivy League school, and I was one of only a handful of kids to go out of state. No one knew how to help me get where I was going, so I’m spending a few years here trying to fix that. I’m teaching Chemistry, chipping away at my $200,000 college debt before adding another $200,000 for law school, meanwhile grooming students to find themselves in the same predicament. After a year taking over my college loan payments from my parents, I can’t remember why pushing students to be half a million dollars in debt is a service, but I’m still going at it.

I’m poor as dirt and busy as heck, so I’ve yet to find the time or money to build back a wardrobe that fits. My clothes still belong to the kid who never recovered from his axillary nerve palsy. My students, though flatteringly, make fun of my ass and preposterously tight pants all the time. They variously refer to me as “Badonkadonk”, “Mr. Juicy”, “Mr. Bubble”, and somewhat less enigmatically, “Mr. Ass”. On the last day of school, I received a gallon glass jar and a poster, which constituted the “Free Mr. Chow’s Ass Fund - a Nonprofit Organization Dedicated to Raising Money for Mr. Chow’s New Pants”.

I’m not entirely sure what you’re looking for in a Band of Brothers application. I do know I’m probably over the word limit, and for that I apologize. So I’ll start to wrap up by making my request brief.

Help. Please help. Please free my ass. If not for me, do it for the children.

If any confirmation is needed of my employ as a public school teacher: I am a Chemistry teacher for the Lee County School District, at Fort Myers High School.

I’m not sure how much the pants would cost if my application goes through, or even that my application will go through at all. But either way, I do want to say how grateful and pleased I am that an organization like yours exists. I am beside myself with the kind of satisfaction one only gets in knowing some amount of rare camaraderie. I’ve always wondered how I could be the only guy who didn’t like the feel of jeans, looking for a very particular cut and fit in a respectable pair of pants without blowing hundreds in tailoring costs. And the fact that you even offer something like a Band of Brothers discount is incredible. I wish I’d met you guys in college. Then maybe I’d be with you bringing decent pants to the world, instead of explosions to high school Chemistry students.

Seriously. Bravo. And thanks.

All the best,

Michael Chow

P.S. For fun, I’ve attached two photos. In the first, I am wearing my favorite pair of pants of all time and wielding “The Rocket Launcher” - the external-rotation immobilizer I wore for the four months following my shoulder injury. In the other, I am in a fashion show, demonstrating the “Sag Effect” in the only pair of jeans I’ve worn in the past 19 years.