Denim Chinos Are Better Than Jeans
So there’s the normcore, and then there’s its cosplay: Ralph Lauren’s Polo Big Fit line from the ’90s was that relationship, incarnate. Thirty-odd years later, these sold-out Big Chinos are that relationship, reincarnate.
Initially a part of the ’90s Polo Big Fit line of oversized silhouettes, the Big Chino is back in an even bigger way. The pant, once relegated to eBay luck with sizing and condition, is wide in a way that resembles pinch to zoom on a regular pair of chinos; scaled up, but with just enough weight in the fabric to sit-slash-sag rather than awkwardly bunch.
Ok so…now the Big Chino comes in denim, and yes, they are a sharper alternative to your average jeans. It’s all the tailoring structure of a chino, with a bit of added heft from the denim. This weightiness effectively restructures the heft of the pant, with sartorial details elevated to their veritable extremes: the thick fly flap, belt loops, and ankle cuffs elevate denim to a place it simply cannot go otherwise.
The fit of the Denim Big Chino is reminiscent of the classic Dries Van Noten wide leg, sans intentional fabric puddling at the hem. Not to make a one-to-one comparison between Ralph and Dries, as each brand obviously has its own unique audience, but with the Denim Big Chino at a fraction of the price of the latter designer’s pants — priced at $298 whereas a similarly wide midweight denim jean from Dries sits at $675 — perhaps these two can find a small consumer overlap in the wide-leg-enthusiast-sense.
Oversized, also, these pants project a sense of humor without becoming the butt of the joke. The vintage ’90s wash — a deep indigo blue that’s more distressed in the thighs — is also a really great counterpoint that the silhouette offers when rendered in denim. Some of the strongest details, though, are the pockets. Seeing the front angled pockets and back buttoned pockets in denim turns these more classic chino details into something nearly trompe l’oeil with that vintage wash, something that nears on self-aware normcore cosplay.
There’s a feeling of high:low in the tailored:relaxed spectrum separating chinos and denim, which is why uniting them is as funny as it is brilliantly engineered.
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