These 14 Pairs of Khakis Will Serve You With Honor
Unsurprisingly, Polo’s khaki pants hit the happy medium everywhere else, with a slightly tapered leg, just-right rise, and those signature slanted pockets. Pair the pleats with a tucked-in OCBD and loafers for an Ivy League charm, go with a knit polo or tucked tee for that weekend art-director valor, or add sneakers and a windbreaker for a full-on ’90s energy.
Best Jeans-Like Khaki Pants: Todd Snyder Relaxed Fit Japanese Selvedge Chino
Praying for a hardier take on classic khaki pants? Todd the God will provide. Snyder teamed up with the legendary Kuroki Mill in Japan to recreate the feel and fit of a true vintage military khaki, weaving them on old, traditional shuttle looms for authenticity.
The design is based on a pair of wide-legged khakis from Todd’s personal archive. And the result? A pair of tough-as-nails trousers in a heftier-than-usual cotton that could survive basic training, nevermind brunch. They’re selvedge, too, which means they’ll age like your favorite jeans: gracefully, and with just the right amount of attitude.
Best Giant Khaki Pants: Noah Single-Pleat Baggy Pant
When designer Brendan Babenzien helped reboot J.Crew, his first home run was the Giant-fit Chino—an archive revival that introduced every mall going man in America to the Bigger Is Better mantra. Funny thing: Babenzien also runs Noah, but that brand’s big-boned pleated khakis have a different inspiration.
Built with skaters in mind, they carry a shorter inseam, so you don’t get a cuff caught in your trucks. But they moonlight just as well for anyone strolling the beach, or looking to flex some extra ankle above their loafers.
Unlike the J.Crew Giant-fit Chino, these don’t come with the slightly fussy double-cuffed hem. The cotton’s got a sturdier backbone, too, at a heavy-for-khakis 11.5 oz. They’ll wear hard and age like a champ. And if you do torch the knees after a few too many missed heel flips, you can always make them into shorts.
More Khaki Pants We Love
How We Test and Review Products
Style is subjective, we know—that’s the fun of it. But we’re serious about helping our audience get dressed. Whether it’s the best white sneakers, the flyest affordable suits, or the need-to-know menswear drops of the week, GQ Recommends’ perspective is built on years of hands-on experience, an insider awareness of what’s in and what’s next, and a mission to find the best version of everything out there, at every price point.
Our staffers aren’t able to try on every single piece of clothing you read about on GQ.com (fashion moves fast these days), but we have an intimate knowledge of each brand’s strengths and know the hallmarks of quality clothing—from materials and sourcing, to craftsmanship, to sustainability efforts that aren’t just greenwashing. GQ Recommends heavily emphasizes our own editorial experience with those brands, how they make their clothes, and how those clothes have been reviewed by customers. Bottom line: GQ wouldn’t tell you to wear it if we wouldn’t.
How We Make These Picks
We make every effort to cast as wide of a net as possible, with an eye on identifying the best options across three key categories: quality, fit, and price.
To kick off the process, we enlist the GQ Recommends braintrust to vote on our contenders. Some of the folks involved have worked in retail, slinging clothes to the masses; others have toiled for small-batch menswear labels; all spend way too much time thinking about what hangs in their closets.
We lean on that collective experience to guide our search, culling a mix of household names, indie favorites, and the artisanal imprints on the bleeding-edge of the genre. Then we narrow down the assortment to the picks that scored the highest across quality, fit, and price.
Across the majority of our buying guides, our team boasts firsthand experience with the bulk of our selects, but a handful are totally new to us. So after several months of intense debate, we tally the votes, collate the anecdotal evidence, and emerge with a list of what we believe to be the absolute best of the category right now, from the tried-and-true stalwarts to the modern disruptors, the affordable beaters to the wildly expensive (but wildly worth-it) designer riffs.
Whatever your preferences, whatever your style, there’s bound to be a superlative version on this list for you. (Read more about GQ’s testing process here.)
