Practicality in pants is more important than the image. As long as you don't pull your pants up to your nipples, I don't think you are a geezer. Just practical, and with a warranty like this, I might buy a pair of these pants too!
This is the first time I have ever seen the comment about boxer shorts. I never met anyone that complained about my tidy whities....
TILLEY PANTS UNLEASH MY INNER GEEZER
By PHILIPPE DEVOS
Saturday, June 12, 2004 - Page L4
On life's journey from newborn to corpse, man passes several sartorial milestones: that first pair of pull-up underwear signalling the end of your potty years, your first necktie that doesn't clip on, your first pair of boxer shorts, which come shortly after your first thoughts of how you might look to another person before having sex (although actually having sex with another person may be years away).
Not too long ago, I crossed another such landmark, but far earlier than I'd imagined.
I was preparing for a two-month trip to West Africa and needed the perfect pair of travel pants. I wanted a breathable, easy-to-wash, quick-drying pair of zip-offs.
A troll of all the outdoor equipment stores in Toronto turned up several pairs, but I always came out of the change room looking as if I should start gathering animals two-by-two. They were all too short for my 37-inch inseam.
So three weeks before my 29th birthday, I unleashed my inner geezer about 30 years early: I bought a pair of pants from Tilley Endurables, a company that since 1980 has being outfitting travellers with more common sense than fashion sense and, ever so practically, sells all its pants unhemmed.
I walked into the Tilley store on Toronto's Queens Quay with a sure gait, my shoulders back and my head high -- the same veneer of confidence I use to hide my latent Christian shame when I buy personal lubricant or rent X-rated movies.
The store sound system was playing golden oldies -- Elvis, I think -- and a few of the customers checking out the fast-drying underwear were old enough to have been scandalized rather than tantalized when the King got the music world all shook up.
I took an olive-green pair of pants into the change room. Slipping a limb into each leg, I could feel my arteries harden, my prostate swell.
When I pulled them up, they didn't stop at my hips where I usually wear my pants, but fit best pulled all the way up to the waist, the way I remember my grandpa wearing his trousers. Although they were flat-fronted, they were cut generously between the hips to make room for the pelvic paunch I'm sure I'll sport by the time I'm making withdrawals from my RRSP rather than deposits.
But they fit. They were snug but comfortable at the top and there was ample room at the bottom for a hem. I took two pairs.
As I handed over my credit card and sealed my fate, the sales woman horrified me with details of the lifetime warranty: Rip a seam and they'll repair it; rip the material and they'll replace it; burn them in a vain attempt to reclaim your youth and they'll send you a new pair.
The warranty seemed a life sentence as my future became vividly clear from the colour snapshots behind the counter. There was a rotund man dressed in Tilley from head to toe, looking like a modern-day Stanley next to a Masai tribesman. There was an aging man in a wet suit and scuba gear at the bottom of some sea with a trademark Tilley hat on his head. There was a couple with a priest in a chapel on their wedding day. The bride wore khaki and so did the groom, the newlyweds matching perfectly in identical hats.
Tilley says their clothes are "suitable for nearly any occasion, from the toughest expedition to lunch in a fine restaurant." I'm guessing "any occasion" for most wearers does not include a throbbing Dakar nightclub at 3 a.m. on a Saturday, where my Tilley pants and I tried to match dance moves with Senegal's hippest, dressed more for a video shoot than an African safari.
But my wild Dakar weekend notwithstanding, the Tilleys were the perfect pants for my trip. They kept me cool in the 40-plus heat of Sahara desert dunes and warm on chilly nights trekking over the Bandiagara escarpment. They dried in no time after I waded through the Fateme River to cross from Mali into Senegal. They hid the dirt of dust storms. When I did occasionally wash them, some cold water and a bar of soap was all I needed. Whether hung to dry on a thorny shrub or a hotel hanger, they always looked pressed and starched.
I'm back in Canada now and my Tilleys are safely tucked away in the back of my closet. They haven't yet replaced the fashionable jeans and designer dress pants of my regular wardrobe, but I'm getting my cholesterol checked just to be sure no lasting damage has been done.
Philippe Devos, a news copy editor at The Globe and Mail, is resisting the urge to buy a pair of Rockport shoes.
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