What's the Deal with ShoOooOrts
How I stopped worrying and learned I hate shorts but have to wear them anyway.
The naïve out-of-towners have a pretty skewed view of weather in LA. They seem to think it’s a perfect 75 degrees year-round. That’s not quite true. Although we in LA are privy to months on end of uninterrupted sunshine, we have our own cross to bear. It’s not winter, as in other places, it’s summer.
“Hold on,” some swamp dweller says, “You only have a dry heat up there. It’s much hotter and more uncomfortable in the summer in my hometown.”
To that I would say, write your own damn substack.
Now that’s over - let me continue. Very rarely are shorts something I willingly pull from my closet. My bias certainly comes from childhood. Growing up, I despaired during back-to-school shopping when my mom and I sifted through heaps of khaki shorts at Target. Aren’t these moments where so much of our trauma is born? We feel the pull of the coming school year - the dread and the excitement - and yet we feel the hope for our dramatic return to the quad dissipating with each shapeless khaki short.
Much in the way the rebellious kid refuses to take a sweater, even though their mom knows it’s going to get cold, cool kids never seemed to be dressed appropriately. Driving to high school, I would see cool kids from other schools (inevitably skaters) braving triple digit heat in black Dickies - without breaking a sweat.
Somehow those desperately hot summer days leading into back-to-school time have made me feel, all those years later, that wearing shorts is giving up. These usually unremarkable garments make me feel like I’ve begun negotiating with a particularly intractable terrorist: the weather.
People who live in places with real winter know this feeling too. At a certain point, fashion goes out the window and you must simply dress to survive. In these seasons of desperation, the gap between the people who care about clothes and the people who don’t in the slightest narrows so much they can no longer discern who belongs to which tribe. Panic ensues, society crumbles.
I think this is, large in part, because (at least in summer), shorts look like an accident. I would argue 9/10 people you see on the street in shorts look… not that cool? Mass-produced shorts suffer from a lot of the same problems as mass-produced pants. Boring flat fabrics (pumped full of stretch fibers and other synthetics), low and unflattering rises, and in the case of shorts — inseams so long they manage to make everyone look stupid.
I was in college the first time I saw short shorts and I loved them. At the time, the brand du jour was Chubbies, a fratty brand that made chino fabric shorts cut to a (gasp) 5 inch inseam. I managed to scrape together enough money to afford their cheaper competitor - Bearbottoms. Though these particular shorts didn’t age particularly well, the length did.
Like many others in 2020-2021, I discovered Patagonia Baggies. Maybe it was because of the name - or maybe my own association with the really baggy mesh shorts kids wore growing up, I’d been reticent to try them. But as soon as I put them on, I loved them. Despite my preference for natural fibers, the Baggies were synthetic - entirely made from Nylon - but it turned out I loved them all the more for it. Unlike many flat front cotton shorts I’d known, they weren’t just the top half of some crappy white label long pant design — they were intentional. The whole fit: the pockets, the internal liner — is fabulous, sublime.
When I left the house in Baggies, I didn’t feel defeated, I felt like I’d made an active choice. Though people who don’t care about clothes also love Baggies, I didn’t feel depersonalized or uncool.
The next step on my journey was the jort.
(Quick sidebar, when I say “jort” I mean what was once a pair of long jeans, cut into shorts, frayed hem and all. What I do not mean is a hemmed jean short.)
I found an incredibly ratty pair of cut-off Wranglers at Jet Rag for cheap and on a whim I bought them… what I didn’t know was that they would soon become my favorite shorts. Jorts are also intentional — someone actually took the time to cut them — and to whatever their preferred length may be! Cutoff shorts began to be the focus of my summer wardrobe. Cut-off Dickies, cut-off fatigue pants - you name it, I’ll wear it. (As long as they’re wide enough in the thigh, no sense in a tight short.)
Cutting something into shorts (and leaving the hem unattended) hits that sweet spot between giving and not giving a fuck. It’s also a great way to breathe life into a garment you maybe didn’t know how to wear - or didn’t fit quite right. Cut-offs don’t have to fit as perfectly in the top block as your regular jeans, so jeans that were a bit big in the waist, maybe just slightly off are perfect candidates for this surgery. And yes, the hem will fray, there will be loose threads, it’s okay.
If it felt to you like shorts inseams just kept getting shorter, you’re right. When I was in High School, default inseams were like 9 inches. Then 7s started to appear, and thanks to Throwing Fits and others, the 5 inch joints became more and more commonplace. But as with many other things, I feel like all trends live together at once nowadays. I predict this summer will see equal parts short shorts and slightly longer shorts.
A video I recently did on Laura Dern’s shorts in Jurassic Park did rather well, making me think people are on the same page. She wears mid-length pleated khaki shorts and I know it may sound strange, given my khaki shorts phobia as a child, but I think they’re sick. Unlike the shapeless shorts of my youth, these are pleated and somewhat structured. Given the tremendous prep wave of the last year, I think these will fit into many of our wardrobes. Pair with canvas sneakers or loafers for a traditional look or get funkier with it with hiking shoes/boots or whatever the cool and outrageous sneaker of the moment happens to be.
Though there are places making versions of this brand new, the cotton twill of this kind of pleated short gets better with serious age. Vintage Ralph Lauren is the easiest (and cheapest) way to find these worn in. But you’re bound to find variants that work for you in at least one of the places you hunt for vintage. If you feel the pair you find are too long, hem them properly, cuff them slightly, or give ‘em the ol’ jorts chop.
Though I hate wearing shorts of any kind in the city (on the beach or on a hike is an entirely different story), I will certainly have to give in at some point in the next few months, if only for self-preservation. I have shorts from Broadway & Sons, Outlier, and Gramicci all in my closet, awaiting the shift from Spring breezes to Summer. There is no point in fighting. At a certain point, I will have to just give up and put on the shorts… hopefully wife pleasers, flow-y shirts, and occasionally even big hiking boots will make the ensembles feel like actual outfits.
albert i dont make six figures i cant afford these brands
Found a pair of 90s Tommy Hilfiger pleated shorts that looked almost identical to what my grandfather was wearing at the time. Chopped them at the original hem and they fit right in the sweet spot, with enough thigh left exposed to show off a slutty little tat but keeping enough skin covered to maintain some semblance of modesty.