I found them folded over a table at a flea market in Lawrenceville back in June. Classic_issue cargo shorts, button flap pockets, waist label, and you could still make out the sticker that had been plastered under the Gap Kids label halfway ripped off; it hadn’t been washed in probably 15 years, just worn and discarded in someone’s closet sometime around 2003 before ending up on this folding table. I probably would’ve kept walking if I hadn’t reached down and grabbed them out of reflex first, stood up in the sun wondering if I was actually about to buy back something I’d spent the last decade cringing every time I saw on somebody.
The million-dollar question behind “are cargo shorts back?” isn’t whether somebody put them on a runway, but whether we’re all supposed to act like nobody spent the 2010s laughing at that one friend who was brave enough to show up wearing his. I have feelings about cargo shorts, guys. Strong ones. And they’re not the ones I thought I’d have.
There’s method to the madness
I hate to say it menswear writers love to say: trends aren’t some magical girls saving humanity from bad style, they’re sales departments seeing what sold well on Vestiaire and telling their design teams to make six dozen versions of it two seasons later.
Cargo pants popped up first, probably three years ago now? Short crop always comes in after the first wave because….well, just ask your parents why pants were trendy for like two years before cargo pants. Anyway. Shorts were bound to happen.
But I’d argue treating “cargo shorts are back” as the final verdict misses the juicer part: Not every high-low waisted cargo short from 2004 deserves to come back, and plenty of the ones that are making a resurgence are nothing like what you remember. The ones I remember? Waistband like a raft and roughly nine pockets each. Designed to parachute somewhere far, far away from your actual pants. What’s popping up are slimmed down through the leg, shorter, and far fewer pockets than I remember trying to stomach back in real malls. To put it another way: I hate thinking about cargo shorts as anything other than an individual garment, but just going off the rise trend spreads are using…calling Carpenter&Coyo’sVERSION of a cargo short “bringing back” cargo shorts is like saying skinny jeans and boot cut jeans are both pants because they’re both blue. Sure, yeah. But also sort of not the point.
So here’s my answer. Thoughtful, even: Cargo shorts are trendy as a concept, not as the ~thing~ you’re thinking of when you hear “cargo shorts.” If you’re thinking of the ones from 2004? Hell no those bastards aren’t “back” full stop. They never should be. I own four thrifted pairs in my dresser currently and I’ve already passed that mental checkpoint on agreeing to re-hash them. It’s not will they ever be stylish again, it’s will I ever feel okay wearing the ones I bought years ago? But if you’re imagining one with two flat, boy-scarf-length pockets down the side…yeah. We’re going there.
And here’s why I didn’t return them
I hung them back up when I got home like I do with everything. Hit them with the kitchen light so I can properly judge something before deciding if I’m actually going to keep it and there they were. Tiny grease stain on the corner pocket no one but me will ever notice, stitch someone had come down part of one of the belt loops to fix but couldn’t quite match the color on hand. Loved them on the table, saw the mark when I got home. Been done myself more times than I care to.
But I kept them. Bought them. And I kept them not because I’ve decided cargo shorts are suddenly the tits but because putting them on said “hey, your problem isn’t cargo shorts it’s how you’ve been asking them to fit.” These sat on my actual knee instead of below it, and the pockets were slim enough that they didn’t balloon out around the books and sweatshirts like a tote bag half your size. They actually looked…well, fitted, instead of like a Halloween float from the ER. Suddenly something I’d been trained to hate my whole life as “cargo shorts” worked because they didn’t have the ridiculous fit twenty years ago made them require.
If you find yourself standing in Good Guys wondering whether or not you should drop 40 bucks on some pants right now my sincere hope is you stop asking “are cargo shorts in trend?” and start asking yourself whether or not they fit like they were made this decade, or copied and pasted from your old one.
That’s the secret. Nobody’s saying cargo shorts don’t work. They did, they just did it in a way that made them not-work if you weren’t six feet tall and collected sleepers. What’s out there right now fixes that. A lot of it quietly.
I’ll say this too, because it’s bugged me ever since Sunday: we treat the trend cycle like it’s Robin Hood when this whole thing’s more Judge Judy. Something’s either “in” or “outsometimes I think we forget items can just exist without having to be FOR something. Nobody on that Sunday table cared if GQ told them cropped cargos were this Winter’s It-Pants; they just wanted to know if it worked. I’d rather know that.
Callum has spent ten years digging through car boot sales and charity shops in Glasgow. He writes about vintage menswear and old workwear, and he’s happiest when he’s found something good buried at the back of a rail.
