Rick Owens F/W 25 Geth Jean – Black Corduroy

Corduroy is a cut-pile weave. Extra weft yarns are floated across the surface during weaving and then sliced, and the cut floats stand up as the ridges the trade calls wales. That construction is what makes corduroy warm at a moderate weight, and it is why it wears the way it does: the tops of the wales abrade first, so a corduroy trouser fades along the ridges at the knee and the seat and records exactly where its owner sits and bends. It is the only cloth other than raw denim that keeps that sort of diary.

Put it on the Geth pattern, which is wide, low, and straight, and the ridges run the length of a very long leg. Vertical wales lengthen. On a wide low-rise trouser that is the whole visual argument, and it is why a corduroy Geth reads taller than a denim one of the identical cut.

This is not a plain cotton corduroy, and the difference shows before anyone explains it. Thirty percent of the cloth is silk, which in a pile fabric goes exactly where it counts. Silk takes dye deeper than cotton and returns light along the length of the filament rather than scattering it, so the crown of each wale carries a low sheen while the channel between them stays matte, and the trouser reads as a series of lines rather than as a single dark field. It also makes the cloth softer in the hand and more fluid through the leg than a cotton corduroy of the same weight, so a wide leg in it falls instead of standing away. The trade is durability. Silk abrades faster than cotton, so the wales will burnish where the trouser is sat in and bent, which is the same diary corduroy has always kept and here it is written in shine rather than in fade.

Black is the difficult colour in corduroy and the one worth having. A pile absorbs light where a flat weave returns it, so black corduroy has depth rather than flatness, and with silk in the pile the wales read as lines of low light laid over it.

Corduroy has been out of the conversation for so long that it comes back looking new, and this is the version we would want to own: the house's own jean pattern, in a cloth that ages honestly. It is also the winter answer to the Geth in cotton, which is a question we get asked in November every year.

Seventy percent cotton and thirty percent silk. Made in Italy, in Black. Full-length five-pocket construction, lower rise, wide leg, in corduroy. From the Fall/Winter 2025 Concordians collection.

Wide and straight through the leg with a lower rise, which reads longer and looser than the tailored trousers in the line. A pile fabric has more body than a denim of similar weight, but the silk in this one softens it, so the leg falls rather than holding its shape away from you. There is no stretch in the cloth, so buy the waist to fit; it will soften further with wear and it will not grow.

With a boot, and with the hem breaking over it. Under a heavy coat, with a knit. Black corduroy sits alongside black wool without either looking like a mistake, which is not true of black denim.

Corduroy is never pressed on the face. An iron flattens the pile permanently and leaves a shine that cannot be brushed out, and with silk in the pile that happens faster and at a lower temperature than it would on a cotton one. Treat it as a dry-clean trouser, or hand wash cool and inside out if you would rather, and hang it to dry away from direct sun, which is what takes the depth out of a silk-content black. Brush the wales back into alignment while damp. Our care guidance covers cotton in detail and its silk section is worth reading beside it.

The F/W 25 Geth Jean is the same cut in wool and the Geth Jeans the same cut in cotton. In the same black corduroy, the F/W 25 Bolan Bootcut Trouser, for the slim cut against this wide one, the SS26 Detroit Cut, and for the same name on a cargo, the SS26 Geth Cargo. Everything we currently hold from Rick Owens is listed together.