Pants are tricky. If you’ve ever had trouble finding, wearing, or otherwise enjoying them, you’re not alone. There are a number of reasons pants are liable to frustrate even veteran menswear enthusiasts—fabric, silhouette, the fact that we’re all literally built different. None of them really apply to Stan Ray’s pants, because Stan Ray’s pants are about as close to perfect as pants get.
For anyone unfamiliar with Stan Ray’s lore, here’s a basic primer. Since the ‘70s, the legendary Texan brand has specialized in American-made workwear, establishing itself as a sort of Southern answer to Michigan-based Carhartt. True to form, every pair of pants it makes is comfortable, built to last, and demands zero special treatment. The best of the bunch clock in at around $85, and are made in the same family-owned factory that started making them five-plus decades ago (these days, select pairs are produced abroad, too).
If you’re curious how made-in-the-USA pants this hard-wearing can clock in at under $100, I hear you—it’s notoriously tough to do, and the list of companies reliably doing it basically begins and ends with Stan Ray. But while the rest of its American workwear counterparts have either moved operations overseas, been absorbed into larger conglomerates, or fallen by the wayside, Stan Ray has stayed the course, remaining fairly-priced and consistent-as-hell the entire way through.
Its OG painter’s pants, for example, are made to roughly the same specs as they were back in 1972, when the Brooklyn Overall Company ordered the very first run. They boast a spot-on full cut, no shortage of handy pockets, and remain the sort of pants you’ll wear for a week and then hunt down in every color available. (A friend of mine has a pair on nearly every time I run into him, and the more he bikes, hikes, climbs, works, and generally lives in them, the better they look.)
The looser version offers a little more room in the leg, while the straighter-leg fatigues are as mercifully straightforward as they come, just as good crisply-pressed as they are when they inevitably become indestructible beaters down the line.
And while some pants are designed with surgeon-like precision—a careful balance of proportions that can go haywire if you mess with their hem or adjust their resting place—Stan Ray’s only seem to get better the less you think about them. Hike ‘em up, let ‘em sag—the margin for error is obscenely wide. (When they do give out, replacing them costs less than a month of LinkedIn Premium.)
Pants are tricky; Stan Ray’s are not. ‘Nuff said, really.
