These Dickies Will Always Be My “Break Glass in Case of Emergency” Pants

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links. Here’s how we test products and why you should trust us.Florence Sullivan5 min readShop $40, amazon.comWelcome to the Esquire Endorsement. Heavily researched. Thoroughly vetted. These picks are the best way to spend your hard-earned cash.We are between Charlottesville, Virginia, and Durham, North Carolina, when I have this epiphany. The sun is shining, and it’s 80 degrees; the windows are, of course, down. This stretch of our three-part road trip is all U.S.-15, straight through central Virginia and those summer-green rolling foothills. I don’t remember what music I had playing, but I had to turn it off.The epiphany in question? My pants are wrong. I need new pants.See, we have two back-to-back wedding weekends. The first was in Washington, D.C., at a nice Catholic church with a gorgeous seated dinner after—all martinis and wine from France. The second is a semiformal mostly outdoor wedding in North Carolina—all gin and tonics on rocking chairs. My original thought was to wear a classic gray suit in our nation’s capital; then I would mismatch it with a gun-club jacket for the outdoor wedding. But on the way down, it just felt wrong. I need brown pants to make it feel a bit more old country; high-twist gray is too city.I nudge my wife awake, and I ask her to route me to a hardware store in the next town we drive through. “Why? Is something wrong with the car?” No, babe, I need pants. I need a pair of Dickies.Shop $40, amazon.comFlorence SullivanThey, Obviously, Dress DownI won’t spend too much time on this because, yes, we all know it. Since Dickies started selling the design back in the ’60s, it’s been a staple of casualwear. Like how jeans and jean jackets came over from workwear, so too has the 874. For a lot of guys my age, Dickies were a first step into fashion or style. When we wanted to distinguish ourselves from every other group in school, we’d grab Dickies. They looked good, wore like jeans, and, crucially, could be purchased by a teenager. Skate kids cut them off and beat them up. Style kids keep them pressed and wear them with graphic tees. When you factor in all the colors they’re available in, you can make a case that anyone could replace all their casual pants with Dickies. I’m not there, but I’m not too far off.And all that doesn’t even mention the fact you can get them anywhere. In high school, I’d buy them at Academy Sports. But 11 years prior to my senior year—and before our town got a big-box sporting-goods store—my older brother would buy them at one of the hardware stores near my brother’s school. Now that his son, my nephew, is in middle school, he’s been buying them on Amazon.Shop $40, amazon.comFlorence SullivanThey, Crucially, Can Dress Up This is where Dickies earn their keep. The scene use at the start of this story explains it. I wanted a suit separate, because I wasn’t going to an expressly formal wedding. Gray trousers were too much. But I was wearing my usual cowboy boots, so a pair of chinos—like true khaki chinos—would look a little bit off. What I needed was something that wears hard and flies under the radar. Dickies do that.All the details make it possible. First, you have the high rise. A vestige of the pants’ original intent as a work pant, the high rise allows you to bend, twist, and move around comfortably. For my purpose, it helps them read a little bit more traditional. After that is the tight polyester twill. The tightness of the weave has always given them a sheen that I think replicates—not exactly, especially not in the Esquire office, but to the average naked eye—that sheen of a good high-twist wool. And although everyone is out on polyester at the moment, it can take a beating. That keeps a pair of 874’s from drooping, discoloring, or looking in any way like a work pant.The last part is the crease. They come precreased, and it’s a hard crease. The pair I got on the way to that wedding could have stood on its own. In that way, again, they resemble real trousers. And I don’t just mean they can resemble trousers in less polite settings. I’ve worn this same outfit—Dunhill gun-club blazer, brown Dickies, and a shirt and tie—in New York City and been asked why I was so dressed up.Shop $40, amazon.comFlorence SullivanThey Will Teach You Why You Wear ClothesThis last bit might be more cerebral. But follow me. The main way a pair of 874’s “teaches” you is in how it is not like the suit pants I’m sneakily using it to replace. First, the logo. Since I’m often hiding the fact that I’m wearing Dickies, I take a knife to the logo stitches immediately. I also realize that the fat belt loops scream workwear. For that, I always opt for a double-breasted blazer, which I try to keep traditionally closed to hide my entire waist. These little style codes are what magazines like this one have trafficked in for decades. I learned them as a kid comparing my pants with my dad’s.The other way Dickies can teach you is by giving you a cheap platform for DIY. Again, when I was a kid, that was probably taking a pair of scissors to the hem. But now, as an adult, I’ve used a few pairs of Dickies to teach myself how to make a trouser turn up. I buy them with a healthy four inches of extra fabric, like suit pants. Two TikToks and one consultation with my wife (better than me at sewing) later, I was on the Singer stitching a turnup. Next time I get bored, I’m going to see if I can take in the waist.Is my tailoring work especially good? No, absolutely not. But these are Dickies and not Savile Row trousers. All of it has weirdly prepared me for all the stuff I write about for this magazine. It’s rare that clothes teach you something in that way. So I encourage you to make a similar detour. Go to Amazon—or, better yet, your local workwear spot—and buy a few pairs. Wear them to church, to dinners, to kids’ soccer practices. Stay up late teaching yourself simple alterations. Your wife might ask why you’re doing it, but she won’t be mad because, somehow, they still only cost $40.Shop $40, amazon.com