Once in a century, the Cubs win the World Series. Once in a lifetime, you meet and marry the girl of your dreams. These pants, the Clarks, commemorate both.
If the Clarks were a poem, they would be an ode. An ode to Clark & Addison, the building erected in 1914 that stands at that corner, and the star-crossed team that plays there. An ode to a diagonal street named Clark and the feisty 22 bus which rolls down it, knifing the North Side of Chicago in two. An ode to a phenomenal couple getting married this fall. Congratulations, Jim & Mercedes.
The Clarks, though, are more than just poetry. They are an incredible pair of pants for the fall season – a lightweight cord, in royal Cubbie blue, with a baseball liner in the pockets and inside waistband, and custom red embroidery of ‘the clarks’ on the waistband in back in between belt-loops.
It’s September. The Cubs are chasing a pennant. Wedding bells are ringing. As I write these words, Ryne Sandberg is singing the seventh inning stretch. It’s a new century. 1908 was a long time ago. Go Clarks. And Go Cubs.
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Guest feature by Ben Savage
Coordinated apparel for men is cool in, at most, three circumstances.
- Sports. You sort of have to represent, you know, who you’re playing for. The umpires usually require it.
- Military. You have a large group of dudes out trying to kill a large group of other dudes– you definitely want to know who’s on which team. Similar to sports.
- Weddings. For some reason, it’s OK for the guy getting married to make all his closest friends, the ones he has stand up there to make sure he actually marries the girl, wear the same clothes. Groomsmen have to get the shirt, the tie, the suit, the tuxedo (I’ve even see the hat)– whatever awful fashion your knucklehead groom wants, you’ve got to get.
Bonobos, in typically irreverent style, changed this game. Caperton Flood is a man whose usually rigorous conformity to propriety and convention is bested only by his deep-seated, rebellious desire for iconoclastic innovation (likely attributable to the fact that he was basically brought up by wolves in redneck Kentucky). For his wedding, nothing less than a total breaking of the mould would do. Hence, the Caperton pants, already legendary (and already out of stock, perhaps permanently). Invading a small Maine town in early summer with a rouge army might seem like a bad idea– yet beautiful things can happen when you marry pants with character with a bunch of characters like this.
To boldly wear red is a rare pleasure in contemporary fashion. Ask yourself: when did you last see a man who didn’t grow up in Italy successfully wear a red shirt? Other than women’s lingerie, hopefully slung on the floor, most of us never even see red clothes anymore. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that actually wearing brilliant Breton reds leads to some outlandish acts. The Capertons inspire the wearer to behave with plucky wit, imbuing a confidence that readily facilitates actions that lesser men would find shameful the next day. For a man wearing these pants, it’s a write off, the sort of humorous anecdote Mr. Flood might refer to in fifteen years as “something I did in my wild days”, and at present the sort of story that keeps you going strong at 3 am when it otherwise doesn’t look like things are working out. Red is the color of blood, my man, and it was blood on the streets of placid Castine, Maine during this here wedding.
There’s a reason bullfighters wave a red cloak.
There’s a reason NC-17 movie trailers run with a red band.
There’s a reason it costs more to insure red sports cars than black ones.
As Spike Lee, or even Ben Savage might say, “It must have been the pants.”
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Bonobos is hosting a trunk show today in New York City. We are psyched to introduce a small crew of our friends and their friends to our pants.
A big thanks to Michael Spirito for his help in getting this event organized.
the Bonobos NYC trunk show
Thursday, July 12th, 6 to 9pm
233 W 14th Street, Apartment 2R
New York, NY 1001
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Back before babies, Andre Agassi and Suddenly Susan, Brooke Shields was the teenage nymphet that
brought the Blue Lagoon to near-breathless life. And she was the “Oh, she’s just too young to be hawking fashion as a sex symbol!” star of a very famous Calvin Klein jeans series of advertisements, you might remember, where she not so subtly uttered:
Nothing comes between me and my Calvins. (nice grammar)
Now, don’t worry, people, I’m not calling myself a sex symbol in the lofty vein of Brooke Shields. Nor did I go to Princeton. And I am also certainly not too young to be selling my sex appeal (Fie on you, 30th birthday). What I am is one world traveler and present Manhattanite who knows a good pair of pants when I see them, and most importantly, knows a great pair of pants when I wear them. And these are they (accentuated by the correct grammar, I hope… take that Shields). For the past four weeks I have been wearing my Bonobos turqs lightweight cords everywhere. From the Grand Prix du Montreal to the Lower East Side of New York City. From Lisboa and Tavira in Portugal to Nantucket. From London to East Hampton. And all points in between (wait, that is an ocean… oh, right, I wore them on the plane as well, did I mention that they are comfortable… like wearing your favorite and most broken in pair of OR scrubs, that is if you are an OR doctor or have access to scrubs of the OR or any section of the hospital for that matter… by the way, I am not a doctor).
Bonobos have the rare quality of being comfortable enough to want to take a lazy summer’s afternoon nap in, yet have the stylings, colour palates and design elements (especially the patterned waist and pocket linings) to be able to party into the night. So why not do both. I do. And, to steal a quote from the woman who dominated the pinups from my early teen Tiger Beat years, as well as to finally add an element of truth to the quote (I mean, does anyone actually believe that Brooke Shields actually went Commando?)
Nothing comes between me and my Bonobos.
- Michael Spirito, 2:15pm, email from the Empire State Building
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Vernon West is a mountaineer, a scholar, a banker, a world traveler, and a statesman. He’s been known to study lizards in the deep jungles of New Guinea and to scale mountains on multiple continents. This summer he’ll be traveling in Central Asia with his sister on a shoestring.
But Vernon is not just a scrappy adventurer. He’s also a sophisticated city man – prone to hot cups of tea and passionate debates on issues of geopolitics or commerce. He binges on books sometimes, devouring several in the span of a week after not reading for months. He can serenade a small group with his skills as a first rate violinist as happily as he can organize an expedition to climb Mount Shasta. He’s versatile socially as well – waking early to head to the pub to watch his beloved Ipswich play, or staying out late looking sharp at the nightclubs of Bogota. Interpersonally, he’s nearly impossible to pigeon-hole. He can engage in California style touchy-feely conversation with a dichotomous mix of tenderness and tough love that is trademark Vernon. A few hours later he is willing to drop the gloves at a rowdy pub for a British-cowboy style shouting match where you’d rather not be on the opposing end.
For all these reasons and more, Vernon is a wheelhouse Bonobos customer. He recently spent some time with us to model the capertons. The main shot of those signature pants are Vernon – see them on the right.
Vernon had the following to say about Bonobos…
These pants cannot be bettered for an athletic man who likes to party. The cut emphasises the physique whilst remaining classy, the fabric is top quality, and the liners are unique and fun. They are much more comfortable than jeans are are suitable for a wider range of situations. I wholeheartedly recommend them to all guys. Here’s to helping you crack the London market one day! Cheers, Vernon
Vernon, we’re hoping you take your capertons , midnight blues , and congos to the UK and show them off to your mates. We appreciate your business and your time to model pants for us. More importantly, though, we appreciate what a wonderful human being you are and the multiple ways you’ve added joy and laughter and cups of tea to our lives.
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