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Frank presenting Ben the Soldier with a pair of jean shorts.
After a little talk about Mr. Beast (who the fuck is he and why should I care?) and un-cancel-able influencers in Albert’s DMs, we get right down to business to discuss another un-cancel-able thing —JORTS
Jorts: The Episode
Jorts. Jean shorts. Daisy Dukes. Denim cutoffs. Dumb long shorts. It’s a spectrum from pants to jorts and sometimes in the middle it’s possibly a japri.
Once the butt of the joke, the jort has ascended to a level of ubiquity I personally didn’t see coming. Last summer, a coalition of five-inch-inseam-lovers and newly-minted vintage aficionados teamed up to bring jorts - usually, but not always the cutoff vintage variety - to the fashion fore.
In a lot of ways that made sense. Many cis-het men have a complicated relationship to shorts (the historical roots of which we will explore) and cutting a pair of rugged, sexy, manly work pants to air out your gams had just enough of that wabi-sabi sprezzatura shit that they made the grade.
The jorts we’re seeing this year are a little different. With a healthier dose of Y2K post-irony, these are more like the Kevin Smith gas station joints and less like the famous ones worn in the baseball scene in Sleepaway Camp. They are long, usually appear to be new and hemmed - or early 2000s “vintage” with the requisite bad rises and washes. So far, these garish and voluminous versions are mostly contained to Brooklyn and my discover page, but the jorts of 2023 are by and large - larger.
They’re almost the new tote-bag boy uniform. The Carhartt crowd that got fits off standing pigeon-toed in New Balance 550s in front of brick walls (2020-2021) are now doing the same with calf length jorts. Sambas (or black derby shoes) prevail in these fit pics, as do high socks, statement chunky belts, and of course - dangly key rings. Occasionally the large jorts hit right above the knee and drape in a lovely way, but it feels like the majority are too long!
Brands Doing Jorts
Bare Knuckles - $168
Levi’s - $-$$$
The default, as with all denim, is Levi’s. Vintage is usually the best option for the patina, etc. If the 501 is most people’s default fit for jeans, the 550 is usually the preference for jorts, as the thigh is a bit wider.
Stan Ray - $85
A great entry level pair of pants, they haven’t seemed to have gotten with the jorts program - hickory would be your closest option, BUT, you could always cut off your stan ray denim painters if they’ve worn out their welcome. (Apparently they’ll be doing jorts spring ‘24)
Kapital - $610
The bone shorts.
Filippa K - $177
- Not exactly my style, but this feels like the style I’m seeing more and more often. Mid-wash, voluminous, long-ish.
Acne - $350
These are becoming more and more pervasive. This below or at-knee length. Alarming to me personally.
Randy’s Garments - $180
Nice color.
It turns out Reed has also done a list of jorts for GQ Recommends, so he dunks on Albert’s choices, recommending a few other notable options…
“Mom I threw up.”
Nudie Jeans Seth Shorts - $185
High waist, wide leg, 90s style wash - as worn by Reed’s friend.
Ernst W. Baker - $137 (on sale)
An incredibly un-hinged ssense fit model.
History/Jistory/Jer-story
There is no real history of jorts. How can you say for certain when someone had the bright idea to cut jeans into something shorter? Probably as long as people wore denim trousers and riveted overalls, they may have cut them into shorter pants when they wore through the knees or were in hot climates. Considering denim was used as sail-cloth and sailors are pretty crafty folk (inventors of the double knee pant, after all) I could see them rocking some jorts in the tropics, sailing around.
But for land-lubbers in the western world, it wasn’t very common to wear shorts. Adults (at least “respectable” ones) did NOT wear shorts. Before the French Revolution, only working class people wore pants - they needed to for working in tough environments. The soft-handed aristocracy instead wore culottes. Far less practical, but a good way to show someone you were royal.
Shorts were for kings! But not for long. After the French Revolution, everyone began to wear long pants - bourgeois and proletariat alike. Starting in this period, the prevailing notion became that only children wore shorts. Boys and girls both wore dresses as babies, but as they grew up, only boys began wearing shorts, which were eventually replaced by long pants as an adult.
This gives the man “wearing the pants” a whole new meaning. Not simply as breadwinner, but as his birthright in a traditional gender role, a man, at least in the old country, would receive his pants and along with them, his manhood. Some historians have described the prevailing theory about aging as moving from femininity to masculinity - I think some kernel of this is maybe still stuck in our collective craw.
The first widely produced shorts were either Bermudas or Gurkhas, depending on who you ask - both around the early 1900s, both made of khaki and both as uniforms for the British army. Cotton uniforms had only recently begun to be implemented, even in the hotter colonies and on-duty officers and soldiers began airing out their lower legs.
LACC students reading the ban on shorts.
Even up until the 1950s, the consensus seemed to be that men shouldn’t wear shorts in public. Honesdale, Pa. in 1938 banned the public wearing of shorts and as late as 1959, the city of Plattsburgh, NY voted to fine anyone older than 16 wearing shorts. Los Angeles Community College also issued a ban on shorts around the same time.
Over the next ten or so years, shorts became more common. 1962’s Dr. No saw James Bond wearing long pants even when he was in the tropics, but only two years later, in Goldfinger, he was wearing a very short swimsuit (and a romper). Shorts began to appear in ads, although they usually seemed pretty chaste. Usually a knee-length Bermuda style in plaids and other such patterns.
This was also the decade that cemented denim’s place in the American and especially young American wardrobe. Although it was becoming more common to shop seasonally and to just consume, most Americans wouldn’t have had anywhere near the variety in their closets. Things were bound to wear out and they could only be repaired so many times. The hippy and anti-war movements popularized worn-out and modified denim even more.
Daisy Duke from Dukes of Hazzard wearing her eponymous shorts.
As shorts shifted from a bad-ass middle finger to authority figures to just something squares wore on vacation, cutting a pair of jeans or pants into your own could have retained a little edge. Whatever the case, jorts were at once punk,hippy, and preppy depending on how one (and where) one wore them. But in most cases, they were worn pretty slim and sexy - the way the original pair of jeans they’d been cut from had been worn.
Interestingly enough, many of the most famous jorts-wearers are women. Daisy Duke in Dukes of Hazzard, (who had to wear skin-colored tights under hers by network mandate) and Debbie Harry.
How Would we Wear It:
ALBERT: I personally have no interest in the very very big hemmed jean shorts that are floating around. I don’t think I’d wear any shorts that long - right around the head of my quad is about as low as I’d go.
Every time I post jorts online, people say I should make them shorter – but I don’t really want to do that either. I feel like the whole point of shorts is comfort and since I’ve gotten thicker in the last few months, they all fit kind of snug. I have no interest in being cinched into my jorts in quite the way Tom Selleck and the cast of Sleepaway Camp was.
I’d split the difference, probably. But it’s good to have a few pairs on deck for your changing moods. I usually wear them with a wife pleaser and a short sleeve button-down and if they’re very short I usually like a bigger t-shirt or a long-sleeve overshirt (weather permitting, of course).
REED: Shorts are unserious, but jorts might actually be some of the most serious and intentional. But Reed prefers elastic waist shorts - nylon, mesh, or the latest Manresa shorts.
DAVID: The only time David wore jorts was for a Tobias Funke costume in 2010. Pants are more effective, but jorts have more utility because they have the construction and durability of long denims! He likes the idea of continuing the life of your jeans after they’ve started to blow out and fall apart.
How Would We Rate It:
Albert: 8/10
I don’t love the way everyone styles their jorts, but that’s kind of the excellent thing about them. There are sooooo many variations and ways to style them. I’d definitely err on the side of vintage cut-offs but they are so customizable and versatile, how can you not love that?
Reed: 7.5/10
I think the good ones out-weigh the bad. Big ones I go 3.5 because there are people that look genuinely good in them, but they are kind of a buyer’s product. They are positioned as making a come-back, but in reality they work well on industry people on who wear clothes a lot and style themselves when they walk out the door and also tend to be pretty skinny and tall. On those people they work. On the rest of us, they’re just hard. There’s serious Kevin Smith potential. On the other ones, even though I don’t wear ‘em - I’ll run a 9. There’s this photo of YG from GQ from like 2016 where he’s wearing a giant flannel, some destroyed cut-offs, white socks, and some shiny-ass hard bottoms. I still think about that. Together I’d go 7.5.
David: 7.6/10
This is an average of the new big jorts and the old cutoffs, and the new ones are doing a lot of the work. Cutoffs are a brilliant way to give new life to a garment that may have started to degrade or you’ve grown out of and they have their own identity to match. The new Cena-type jorts have no DIY aspect or ability and I’m suspicious they’re just a way to recycle all the unsold raver pants from last year.