Nigel Cabourn Army Cargo Pant

This is a trouser that adjusts at both ends, and once you notice that, the rest of the design follows from it. The waist has adjustable tabs, so it can be taken in without a belt and without the gathering that a drawstring waist produces. The hems have drawstrings, so the leg opening can be pulled closed at the ankle or left to fall open. Between those two points the cut is deliberately wide and loose, which would be a lot of volume on a fixed trouser and is a range of options on this one: cinched at the ankle it reads as a tapered military trouser, left open it reads as a wide leg. That is an unusually large amount of garment for one pattern to contain. It is one hundred percent cotton and made in Japan, in green.

Adjustability on a trouser is usually a substitute for fit. Here it is the point of the garment, because the same trouser genuinely gives you two silhouettes and neither is a compromise.

Military kit is the largest strand in Cabourn's archive, and the drawstring hem is one of the details that comes straight out of it.

One hundred percent cotton. Wide, loose fit, drawstring hems, adjustable waist tabs. Made in Japan. Color: Green. No weave is stated for this cloth, which is worth knowing if you are comparing it to the other cargo trouser in the house's work.

Sizing runs 30 through 36 on a waist scale, and the adjustable tabs give real range on top of that, so a waist between sizes is less of a problem here than on most trousers. The leg is cut wide by pattern. Cotton at an unstated weight will shrink once on a hot wash.

With the SS Baseball Shirt or the Fisherman's Shirt. Under the Jeep Coat. Cinched at the ankle with the Fireman Jacket is the version that uses the drawstrings rather than ignoring them.

Cool wash, gentle cycle, dry flat or on a line rather than hot. Untie the hem drawstrings before washing, since a knotted cord dries at a different rate from the cloth around it and can mark. Our care guidance covers cotton in more detail.

The Army Cargo Pants are a different trouser with a similar name, cotton in a nano-pigment herringbone twill, and the British Army Pant is cotton cut for the military. Everything we carry from Nigel Cabourn is listed together.