Nicholas Daley Wide Leg Cargo Pant

A cargo pocket is a difficult thing to use well. Put it on a slim leg and it bulges. Put it on a wide one and it disappears into the volume. Cutting the leg wide enough that the pocket lies flat against it and reads as a panel rather than as a pouch is the answer, and it is the answer Daley arrived at for spring 2025.

Doing it in linen is the part that takes nerve. Linen is a bast fibre from the flax stalk: cool, strong, entirely without stretch, and committed to creasing. It is also, at any weight light enough to be worth wearing in heat, close to transparent, which is why this pair is lined in cotton. A lined linen trouser is a considerably more expensive garment than an unlined one and a much better one, because the lining lets the linen hang from the waist rather than catching on the leg, and the drape that follows is the whole reason to cut linen wide in the first place. Green rather than the expected oatmeal or stone is what stops it reading as resort wear.

We took this as the summer trouser in the spring collection, and the lining is why. Most wide linen trousers on the market are unlined, and they cling, crease into the wrong places, and show everything. This one does none of that.

Nicholas Daley's spring collections run on linen made up in England, and the wide leg is the shape he has settled on for it.

Body one hundred percent linen. Lining one hundred percent cotton. Made in England. Wide leg, cargo pocket detailing. Colour: Green.

Cut wide from the top of the leg to the hem. Linen relaxes noticeably across a day and returns with washing, and the cotton lining will keep the leg hanging straight rather than following the body. Length matters on a wide leg: it wants to reach the top of the shoe and no further.

With a plain white or ecru shirt and a sandal. With the Aloha Shirt worn loose. Green is the decision here, so keep everything above it plain.

Wash cool and gently or have it cleaned, and dry flat or on a line away from heat. A lined garment takes considerably longer to dry than an unlined one and will distort if it is hung wet, so dry it flat. Press on the reverse. Our fabric care guidance covers the rest.

The Wide Leg Cargo Pant in navy is the same trouser in a technical cloth. The Cargo Pant in summer tartan is the tartan linen, the Wrap Kilt in green linen the linen wrap, and the Aloha Shirt the summer shirt. Everything we carry from Nicholas Daley is listed together.