Best Upgrade Cargo Pants: Carhartt WIP Aviation Cargo Pants
Carhartt’s fashion-savvy younger label, Work In Progress is known for taking classic Carhartt designs and bringing them into the modern era with leveled-up fabrics and the same top-notch construction that made the brand famous.
The Aviation Cargo pant is a prime example. It tweaks the mainline’s original cargo pants into a silhouette that’s both baggier and cleaner while using higher-end ripstop material that feels far and away better than the stuff you get at down-home workwear stores. Of course, all that comes at an upgraded price tag, too. But if you’ve got the cash and a hankering for something that much more stylish, then this is where we’d point you.
Best Cargo Pants for Vintage Fiends: Polo Ralph Lauren Big Cargos
Polo Ralph Lauren
The Big Cargos
Pros
- Baggy silhouette
- High-quality materials and construction
- Period-correct details
Cons
- Only comes in one colorway
The Big Cargos are, yes, big. But their gigantic nature isn’t something the legendary designer simply made up to seize the wide-leg zeitgeist. No, these are actually true to the original M-51 field pants from the midcentury. They come with a washed-down olive cotton twill that looks like they’ve just emerged from a pile of vintage mil-surp. But the retro details don’t stop there. With angled flap front pockets, brace buttons at the waist, internal waist loops, and on and on and on.
The best part, undoubtedly is the big honkin’ silhouette. Ralph’s Big Fit series from the ‘90s was certainly a hit, but these take after the originals which were meant to be worn over other pants—hence their bigness. Anyway, these are great and a dead ringer for the real things which will cost you more money and more time.
Best Designer Cargo Pants: Sacai Belted Cotton Twill Cargo Chinos
Sacai
Belted Cotton Twill Cargo Chinos
Pros
- Avant-garde design
- Top-notch construction
- Comes in a wide variety of colorways and fabrics
Cons
- A talking to from your landlord
- Single inseam
Sacai’s iteration upon iteration has proved that putting yourself into a box can yield endless creative output. Designer Chitose Abe’s obsession with warping and remixing military garments has resulted in a cult following. Though she’s more known for riffing on bomber jackets, this take on the cargo pant deserves equal awe. By experimenting with the panels to create a pocket out of the legs rather than applying a pocket on top, we get a unique cargo pant you won’t see anywhere else.
More Cargo Pants We Love
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Style is subjective, we know—that’s the fun of it. But we’re serious about helping our audience get dressed. Whether it’s the best white sneakers, the flyest affordable suits, or the need-to-know menswear drops of the week, GQ Recommends’ perspective is built on years of hands-on experience, an insider awareness of what’s in and what’s next, and a mission to find the best version of everything out there, at every price point.
Our staffers aren’t able to try on every single piece of clothing you read about on GQ.com (fashion moves fast these days), but we have an intimate knowledge of each brand’s strengths and know the hallmarks of quality clothing—from materials and sourcing, to craftsmanship, to sustainability efforts that aren’t just greenwashing. GQ Recommends heavily emphasizes our own editorial experience with those brands, how they make their clothes, and how those clothes have been reviewed by customers. Bottom line: GQ wouldn’t tell you to wear it if we wouldn’t.
How We Make These Picks
We make every effort to cast as wide of a net as possible, with an eye on identifying the best options across three key categories: quality, fit, and price.
To kick off the process, we enlist the GQ Recommends braintrust to vote on our contenders. Some of the folks involved have worked in retail, slinging clothes to the masses; others have toiled for small-batch menswear labels; all spend way too much time thinking about what hangs in their closets.
We lean on that collective experience to guide our search, culling a mix of household names, indie favorites, and the artisanal imprints on the bleeding-edge of the genre. Then we narrow down the assortment to the picks that scored the highest across quality, fit, and price.
