Chino Tasting: Best Dress Chino

G. Bruce Boyer inspects Best Dress Chino # 9

J. Press MTM Chino

Made by Martin Greenfield $275

The NY Times recently featured a $550 khaki made for Band of Outsiders by Brooklyn tailor, Martin Greenfield. Band of Outsiders is a brand so irksome in it's faded Polaroid hipness that I refuse to link it here. The Time's piece questions a $550 khaki in this economy but stops short of any real criticism. Instead, the paper quotes a consultant who suggests, "It's not about the price...it's about who's wearing them..."

There are a lot of guys, not as many as before the depression of '07 but there are a lot of guys who pop into Bergdorfs and don't give a second thought to dropping $550 on a pair of khakis. This is the same kind of guy who has a fur lined sink at home. I'm not sure I want to dress like a drunken sailor but what if I were to tell you that J. Press sells a Martin Greenfield khaki for half the price?

Press only had a sample in white but the pant can be ordered in khaki as well. All kinds of bangs and whistles including a full lining are offered and inclusive of the $275. Bruce gave it a 90 and called it, "well made and clean, trad silhouette, nice fabric" while Robert thought it deserved a 95, "fancy maker, twill fabric, dress make, tab waist, high rise, cotton drill." Both men awarded it winner of the "Best Dress Chino" category.

It's a damned nice pant and it has me wondering. Last winter I broke out a suit maybe five times. Instead, I reached for a Shetland sweater and wool dress pant over and over and never was I under dressed. A dressier chino pant with a decent shirt, an interesting belt and serious alligator loafers could take the Casual Friday uniform of, Dockers, golf shirt and Kiltie loafers, to a whole new level.

$275 is a lot of money for a chino. But what have you spent $275 on and had nothing to show for? A round of golf? Dinner? A bottle of Champagne? A long night on Hay Street in '77? Think of this chino as a chilled Antinori chardonnay from Umbria- rich and elegant but understated and cool as you stroll up Lex crossing 62nd on a very hot August afternoon. Suitless and tieless but well turned out and turned up.