"In the trade from India to the West, textiles were essential. Madras, pajama, and the Kashmir shawl travelled the route that, for the British, came to define richness or, by acronym, posh: Port Outward, Starboard Home. Khaki was derived from the yellow-saffron dust that inflected the naively white uniforms of the colonials and shrewdly became their regulation color. Even today, "khaki" is strictly a color in the United Kingdom and "chinos" designate the pants. The color and the cotton trousers made their voyage to France, England, America, and around the world, even arriving in one country a shade darker than another (notably the preference for a darker, salade-Nicoise-tinged khaki in France.)"
-Richard Martin in Khaki: Cut From The Original Cloth
Photo courtesy of Gap, Inc.
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8 comments:
I live for chinos. Honestly I do.
Interesting quote. My reading interests mainly hinge around the British East India Company, the original transporters of these materials to England and the colonies. I have built a collection of several hundred volumes on John Company. Nice to have a quote from that area. Keep up the good work.
Khaki chinos are essential to a gentleman's wardrobe; however, I find that too many men wear them too often.
I had mine on today while shopping at Paul Stuart. I felt like kind of a bum but they know me well enough from stopping in during the week while dressed.
Just to tie this in to last week's post on labels I was at Dorrian's last night on 84th and 2nd(a bar known for its WASP-like patrons.) The fellow behind the bar was wearing khaki chinos with a windmill motif nantucket belt and a green and white lacoste wristband (that's for you Trad) but he made an attempt to somehow shave off the label on the backside of his chinos. Brought a smile to my face...or was that the alcohol and brunette....
Is there a difference between khakis and chinos? If you Google them, you'll see that some "experts" argue that the terms are used interchangeably, while some claim that chinos are "dress khakis". I always thought that it was a regional difference, with the same trousers being called "khakis" in some parts of the U.S. and "chinos" in others.
Will, I think you'll find that the Port Out Starboard Home story is erroneous. There is no evidence for it and seems to have been invented after the fact. However, the other information about Khaki for example was welcome. Yours is one of the few blogs out there worth reading. Keep up the good work
The POSH story might, in fact, have been created after the fact, but it certainly remains in conventional wisdom in varying forms. I understood the term was created by the English uppercrust traveling to the West Indies by ship for the winter sun and those who could afford it always had cabins on the sunny side of the ship which, in the winter time in the Northern hemishpere is the south side. On ships going out, i.e., sailing west, the south side is the port (left) side of the ship; returning, the sun is on the right or starboard side, hence Port Out Starboard Home.
That's Jin Kwon from Lost.
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