Engineered Garments Painter Pant – Olive

The painter’s pant is a specific garment with a specific ancestry, and the thing that distinguishes it from the carpenter’s trouser it is usually confused with is what the pockets are for. A painter carries flat things and small things: a scraper, a brush, rags, a knife. So the pattern runs multiple pockets and loops sized for those, cut roomy through the seat and thigh because the job involves ladders and kneeling, and it is traditionally made in white because white is what does not show the trade.

In olive rather than white, and in a cotton with ten percent linen through it, the reference gets quieter and the garment gets better. Ten percent linen sounds like nothing and changes how a cotton reads: linen is a bast fibre with slubs and irregularities along its length that no amount of spinning removes, so blending a little in scatters those through the weave and gives a flat cotton a broken, textured face that returns light unevenly. It also makes the cloth cooler, because linen conducts heat away faster than almost anything woven.

Why we selected it

A relaxed trouser with real pockets, in a cloth with something going on in it. The painter’s pattern is the most comfortable working trouser ever drawn and almost nobody makes a good one.

Materials and construction

Ninety percent cotton, ten percent linen, made in the USA. Relaxed fit with multiple pockets. Colour: Olive.

Fit notes

Relaxed through the seat and the thigh, which is what the pattern requires, so it is fuller than a straight fatigue trouser at the top and falls from there. A cotton-linen blend has slightly less give than pure cotton and softens considerably over a season. Linen content means it will crease and should.

Styling

With the Work Shirt in natural. Under the Trucker Jacket in the same cotton-linen blend. With the Raglan Hoodie, which is the plainest thing to do with it.

Care

Wash cool and hang to dry, and press damp rather than hot if you press it. This is a two-fibre cloth, so treat it as the more delicate of the two would want. Our care guidance for mixed cloths covers the rest.

Related pieces

The RF Trousers are cut from the same cotton and linen cloth, and the Trucker Jacket is the jacket in it. The Natural Cotton Heavy Fatigue Pant is the heavier working trouser, and the Work Shirt in natural the shirt. There is more on the house on the Engineered Garments designer page. Everything we carry from Engineered Garments is listed together.