Why I Needed Dickies Pants on a Road Trip

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We were between Charlottesville, Virginia, and Durham, North Carolina, when I had 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 US-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 had 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 was a semi-formal 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 needed 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.

Florence Sullivan They, Obviously, Dress Down

I 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 casual wear. 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.

Florence Sullivan They, Crucially, Can Dress Up

This is where Dickies earn their keep. The scene I’m using at the start of this story explains it. I wanted a suit separate because I wasn’t