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.

Check out the Navy Palms, hard at work, getting ready to be worn on steamy July and August nights.

The dog days of summer are here, the preorders came and went along with the longest day of the year a few weeks ago.

We’re hustling along, trying to produce you fresh new Bonobos; ultra lightweight cords and shorts.

Enjoy these pics from the heart of Manhattan, where the fabric rolls out onto tables, skilled craftsfolk cut, sew, steam and fold, and Bonobos taxi down to headquarters where they depart for your homes via the good people of Federal Express.

I’ve been getting a few emails, questions & comments about why our shorts cost what they cost, so this morning I decided to post my response to one of these comments from a potential customer.

“Dear Customer,

Let me open the kimono a little bit to explain how we arrive at our pricing. There are a few elements at work here that cause our products to be priced where they are–no higher, no lower. Just what we know is fair, and more appropriately priced than anything that you’ll buy in a retail store. Our pricing is a function of the quality of our raw material inputs and the labor costs of high quality cut & sew shops right here in America.

The reason that our shorts are not substantially less expensive than our pants is that the process to make shorts & pants is almost identical!

Our materials:

- all of our shorts are made of the highest quality (organic when possible) cotton from Belgian & Spanish mills, same as our pants; it’s not cheap to get the best fabric when you’re not that big of a company, yet

- our buttons are custom made metal pull/slide buttons from Italy– we have the same buttons on our shorts & pants

- our zippers are soft-tooth metal zippers (the zippers/buttons are among the highest quality you can find in the world); again, same on shorts & pants

Making the shorts:

- most of the costs involved in the construction of our pants are replicated in the production of our shorts. Our waistbands are still hand-sewn to mirror a man’s waistline better than a machine cut option (a la Banana republic and others). The contours around the rear/thigh are still the same in our shorts as they are in our pants. These custom elements to our product production, along with the high quality of our fabric, are what drive our prices. When we make pants, compared to making shorts, the only additional costs that you are seeing involve the additional .2-.3 yards of fabric from the knees on down and the cost of finishing the pant bottoms. This explains why it’s hard to make high quality shorts much cheaper than high quality pants– you’ve usually got to skimp on labor costs, a path of poor quality and ethics.

What you are NOT seeing in the pricing of our pants is what you DO see in comparable brands (Zegna, Paul Smith, Theory, Armani, John Varvatos, etc.). In their pricing they include the costs of expensive retail space, expensive models, advertising in print magazines, launch parties, etc. It’s the reason our pants are priced at $120 as opposed to $250 or higher. It’s the reason our pluperfects are $350 and not $900. It’s the reason our shorts are $95, and not the prices seen on this page here: Saks 5th Ave. shorts. 90% of the shorts there are more expensive than ours, even before you consider their hugely marked up shipping and handling costs that will hit you at checkout.

(Redacted), I apologize for the length of this email but it’s really important to us to effectively convey this information appropriately–it’s our core philosophy and central to what we believe is wrong with the retail system. We don’t charge you a cent more than what we’re charged on shipping from FedEx, while a company like Brooks Brothers does the total opposite.

We price our pants fairly and we have a unique return policy, “any pair, any time, any reason.” We do this so that there’s no risk to a customer like you. If you wonder why our shorts are priced at $95 we encourage you to try them out, knowing that we’ll take them back at any time for a full credit. We’re a really small company right now, but we hope that with our maniacal focus on changing the retail paradigm from one that largely punishes guys like us to one that recognizes that the customer is everything, we can effect a men’s clothing revolution.

Moreover, if our shorts are too expensive because you’ve chosen to take a career in public service, or some other position that is radically underpaid relative to the amount of good you do for the world, feel free to check out our Band of Brothers program where we sell our wares at cost to these inspiring individuals.

Thanks for taking the time to ask a probing question and I hope my answer is satisfactory. If it isn’t feel free to call or email me at any time.

Best regards,

Dave

Bonobos is having a trunk show this Saturday, from 2 to 5pm, at the private home of our Chief Brand Advisor, Michael Spirito. The address for the show is 233 W. 14th Street #2R, which is in between 7th and 8th Avenues. Come check out our shorts, and pick up your Orange Crush, Turqs, Pink Panthers, and Capertons for the Hamptons. Rumor has it the new Super Soakers may even make an appearance.

When Brian moved to Chicago in the summer of 2007, I told him he would be one of the ten most eligible bachelors in the city, and that he should aim to be featured in the pages of Chicago magazine for exactly that reason.

Of course I didn’t really believe that it would happen.

Chicago magazine had different ideas. I’m now the one riding his coattails to the Chicago magazine singles party this Friday night… where he is a featured guest.

In the June issue of Chicago magazine, Brian is slated as one of the cities twenty most eligible singles. Congrats bud. Just don’t let your dating life in Lincoln Park get in the way of making our customers more beautiful trousers. Your latest, the Super Soakers and the Snapdragons, are selling like hot cakes.

At Bonobos we aim to please with awesome trousers and prompt, attentive customer service from our team of Ninjas. It bums us out, then, when we can’t serve customers who ask for our pants in a size 28. We’ve been taking notes, and we’re now ready to serve guys like Will.

In Will’s own words:

“Just wait ten years, then you’ll still be thin and all of your friends will be overweight.” That’s what they say. But what if I would like to wear pants that fit my body sometime in the next ten years? Sure, I can find size 28 jeans. Khakis? Hopefully you are short enough to fit into boy sizes. Dress slacks? Forget a tailor, you need a construction worker to mangle those size 30 slacks to fit your unnaturally slim waist. One day you will say, “that’s it, I’m a size 29 and that’s that.” Wearing your brand new 29″ khakis you look down to find the cinch in the waist your belt created - time to face the facts and embrace the 28. But maybe there is an upside to the 28″ waist. In a world of heavily constricted choice, every single pair of pants that actually fits is a prize that brings true happiness. And now that Bonobos has brought a high quality, casual pair of non-jean trousers to the market, I, for one am smiling. And I’ll wear them gleefully, eating my bacon cheeseburgers… without concern.

So to Will and to all of the other size 28s out there, enjoy. Check out the Brothers Grinn in 28.

We have built it, will you come?

In the finance world, you short when you’re nervous about a company’s prospects, an index’s strength.

At Bonobos, we make shorts because we’re going long. We’re going long on you. You are our first 2,000 customers. We thank you for your patronage, your business, your enthusiasm, and your candor. We love it, we take it to heart, and we’re working hard to build a brand that you can love back.

And so when you asked us for shorts for this summer, we took that to heart, and started working overtime to translate the signature Bonobos cut into a revolutionary pair of shorts.

We hope you like our initial foray.

Bonobos shorts are made with the better-fitting Bonobos curved waistband, the pattern that has led to our trousers to be referred to by Uncrate as “the holy grail of pants.” The shorts are cut to a 9 inch inseam, short enough that you won’t be accused of wearing shants but long enough so that they land just above the knee. They include the polished chrome, soft-tooth zippers and slide-snap closure that is now standard on all of our trousers.

We’re starting with some colorful and boisterous styles, the Flip Fantasias, the Navy Palms, the Kid Nikis, the Sunscreens, the Aquemini, and the Jungle Kings. They’re kind of like our Bonobos pocketing and waistbands: loads of personality and energy. Expect some more traditional core color offerings to follow, but we lead with fireworks and our signature line to get you fired up for summer!

So order them up, and take advantage of our no holds barred return policy. And as always, your feedback is valued and enjoyed so let us know what you think.

Chicago has always been the glittering, sexy belly ring of the American Middle West. A small island of cosmopolitan panache in a sea of corn and conversion vans, much envied by Your Humble Blogger, growing up in the rustic wilds of Ohio. And who happens to have a healthy dose of the Big Windy in his blood? Why, our own Bonobos founder/designer himself Brian Spaly. As a matter of fact, he was the featured designer recently in CS Magazine - Chicago Social, that is. Take a look below and read about creating sharp slacks to better fit men, be they in New York, New Delhi, or the city of broad shoulders.

Wait a sec. Did you catch that? Hold on. Is she wearing what I think she’s wearing? We clicked here, and what did we behold right around the 2 minute and 45 second mark? Is it? Could it be? Yes, I think it’s strawberry lip gloss. And a t-shirt that looks surprisingly familiar. Now, we’re not claiming to endorse any candidates in any upcoming elections, with the possible exception of Hank Zimmerman for Nevada State Liquor Board Chair. You see, whereas most may fight over tax rebates and constitutional amendments, we go to fists for corduroy and cotton twill. But we do believe strongly in the men’s pant revolution. That’s right, revolution. And that will not be televised. It might, however, be broadcast on youtube.

Ah, yes, this old doozy. The eternal ski plane question. Indeed, it seems we can’t stop off at a Klondike honky tonk or a Yukon speakeasy without it cropping up. Well, the answer is YES*. We recently purchased from the Finnish Weather Service a used ski plane with tundra/penguin research station/frozen fjord capabilities. “Ice Dancer,” we call her, as she soars off for the permafrost, trailing banners of ice crystals from her wings. And who pilots our little darling, carrying sleek twill Midnight Blues and snug alpaca Pluperfects to the glacial beyond? Why, Buzz Goldrush himself, a grizzled, colorful fellow we stumbled upon eating moose jerkie when our car broke down outside Nome, Alaska. His sobriety may come into question, and he may only have one functioning eye, but his depth perception is impeccable, thanks to a crude form of triangulation using nothing more than his own thumb and a spit of tobacco. So if you see a jaunty puffin of a plane skittering across the sky, ushering our pants northward, give “Ice Dancer” and ol’ Buzz a hearty salute. And if nobody waves back, it’s probably only the Finnish Weather Service.

*Disclaimer: Bonobos may or may not actually own an arctic ski plane