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At this point, there's no stopping J.Crew and its rapid rise back to the top of the menswear charts. When the first collection under newly-installed men's creative director Brendon Babenzien dropped last summer, it was replete with tasty knits, Ivy-infused tailoring, and a heap of knockout outerwear, all twisted just enough to turn heads and get the internet buzzing. Yet among the splashy revamp, the very classic, ‘50s-style Giant-fit chinos stood out among the pack. A humungous pair of pants is something you'd expect to see from far edgier retailers, not the store you used to turned to for last-minute wedding suits and button-ups respectable enough for job interviews. Yet, somehow, J.Crew managed to be at the right place at just the right time.
The Giant-fit chinos’ epic proportions hark back to the roomy silhouettes of J.Crew's pre-internet era (the brand used to be catalog-only, for god’s sake), which themselves recalled vintage work pants of the mid-century. When they debuted about a year ago, the reaction wasn’t just positive, it was jubilant—so much so that the brand pivoted to pre-orders to handle the demand before selling through its inventory completely. In the time since, demand hasn't diminished—but thankfully, supply has risen accordingly, too.
The Giant-fit chinos now come in enough colors to set your closet straight until skinny jeans inevitably comes back into vogue in about a decade or so. With a pair of leather derbies and a crisp Oxford shirt they’ll hold their own in more buttoned-up settings, but can easily slip into off-duty mode mixed and matched with a vintage hoodie and trashed canvas kicks. (If you're feeling a bit more adventurous, you could opt for the preppy-as-hell embroidered joints instead.) Aside from a trusty pair of jeans, you'd be hard-pressed to find pants more versatile—and at just $98, to boot.
The Giant-fit chino isn’t just a sharp shift away from the brand's Ludlow-suited heyday: it's a larger nail in the coffin for slim-fit pants in general. (The other proverbial nail? J.Crew's new, decidedly chill Kenmare suit). The whole brouhaha is a lot to wrap your head around, we know, but of this we’re certain: expect it to keep selling briskly—in every damn color the brand drops—as the Crewnaissance continues apace. Now is the time to get yourself a big ol' pair of pants, after all, and they don't get much bigger than this.