The Chino Spectrum

This is a guide to features and options for chinos. Two caveats: 1) I use “chino” to mean any cotton trousers here, and 2) it’s not a buying guide, but there’s already a great one by Pete from PTO here.

A piece for every occasion

Not so many years ago, I remember being impressed by a friend’s pair of Dockers. They seemed practical and hardwearing, but more put together than my chinos, which were all thin, casual summer trousers. His could work as smart casual as well as for weekend trips.

After finding a pair, I started to recognise the characteristics I liked (heavier cotton twill, flat front, comfortable but tapered fit) and began to look for them elsewhere. I ended up moving on to Gap’s (now discontinued) “tailored” chinos and similar models, but found the low rise less than comfortable. Charles Tyrwhitt was better, but by that point I knew it still wasn’t perfect.



As when you get to know any new item, what I’d initially thought was one garment turned out to be a whole range of design choices. There are a vast number of options (fabrics, fit, finishing, cuffs, pleats, pockets, etc.)



Here’s one way to simplify the choice. There are two big influences on chino design: workwear on the one hand, and tailoring on the other. In practical terms. the question boils down to this: how close are these chinos to jeans, and how close to dress trousers?

The Spectrum

If you plot models from workwear-minded to tailoring-minded, you get something like this:

(full size here)

On the left, you get trousers with a low or mid rise, jeans-style pockets, heavy fabrics and sometimes rivets. They’re often garment washed, which gives a faded or “worn in” look. Some of these are actual workwear, made for a construction site, others are just made to look like it.

On the right, you get more “sartorial” details: higher rise, extended waistbands, sitched-in cuffs, on seam pockets, and sometimes pleats, all more characteristic of dress trousers. Finer, more delicate fabrics are more common.

In the middle you get plain front, plain hem chinos, with a number of different variations in their cut, pockets, waistband and fabric. Some are smartened-up workwear chinos, some are simplified cotton dress trousers. This is where you find what Ian Anderson calls the “in between wardrobe”: items which work in either context, and outside of business meetings or building sites will fit most occasions.

Simon Crompton has argued that formality is about plainness, so the more extra details a trouser has, the less formal it becomes. While this might once have been true, I think that the “sartorial” details favoured by Ambrosi and other Italian makers actually make them look more self-conscious and therefore less casual (even if, at the same time, also less appropriate for a business meeting). To my eye, very plain trousers in the middle of the spectrum would be fine at a barbecue, but lavishly detailed Italian chinos might not.

Choosing a chino

The bigger question than brand is deciding what features you want. Of course, this depends on context: what else you’re wearing, and where you want to go. I prefer chinos on the tailoring end of the spectrum—if I want to wear something cut and built like jeans, I’d rather wear denim. Here are a few features I look for. I’ll use a pair of Zegna chinos to illustrate.

Mid- to High Rise

A higher-rise chino makes more sense with shirts and tailored jackets, not to mention that they tend to be more comfortable. It’s often perceived as more flattering as well—creating a longer leg and avoiding a gap between waistband and the open quarters of a jacket.

Split Waistband

A common feature in tailored trousers, a split waistband makes alterations particularly easy.

If you have a sewing machine, it’s pretty simple to alter the waist yourself: all you really need to do is open up the waistband at the split, open up and re-do the long seam from the crotch to the waist either tighter or looser, and then fold the waistband back together.

Pockets on a slant

Jeans-style pockets can be small, difficult to access and uncomfortable with anything of size in them. Cut on a slight slant, you get ease of movement and a sleeker look.

Tailoring-style Details

There are also a bunch of small details that tailoring brands often provide in their chinos. None of these are hugely important to me, but they’re nice to have. Real horn buttons. Belt loops attached from the underside (like on good dress trousers). Bar tacks on the edges of pockets. Coin pockets. More luxurious fabrics (these are Zegna’s Cashco, a cotton blend with 7% cashmere.) On the fly there’s also a keeper for a bent buckle, though I can’t say I’ve ever used it.

Finding a pair

The main downside is that higher-rise, more tailoring-friendly chinos are harder to find, and often considerably more expensive. Italian trouser-focused brands like Rota, PT01 and Incotex all make RTW models with a higher rise. Derek of Die Workwear! suggests Ralph Lauren’s Preston model, which is hard to find in the UK and not cheap. As well as making bespoke, Salvatore Ambrosi sells RTW models through The Armoury, but they’ll cost you $800. There is always bespoke, if you can justify the time and money. A cheaper custom option would be a made-to-order retailer like Luxire, who will make chinos with any combination of details (including the extremely ill-advised, if you really want), from about $100.

For RTW, I recommend chinos made by Italian RTW tailoring companies. Corneliani produce the Ralph Lauren model recommended by Derek. I have found Zegna chinos (not Zegna Sport) such as those featured above to work well. You get some carry over of expertise and sensibility from tailored trousers to chinos, but unlike some of the specialist trouser makers, they are also fairly restrained stylistically. (I suspect in a few years we’ll be looking back on double-pleated, extended waistband, 2″ cuffed “Neapolitan” trousers with the same eye-rolling that people in the early 2000s directed at the pleated trousers of the 1980s.) At least in the UK, trousers by Zegna, Canali and Corneliani are also much easier to find than Incotex and the like, both at retail and on eBay. And because they’re easy to alter, you can also pick them up used or from new old stock fairly confidently without needing to try them first.