Looking for more shorts intel? Here’s every pair worth your dollars right now—plus everything else you’ll want to wear this summer.
Around this time every year, the GQ Recommends team convenes in our clandestine subterranean lair (it’s like the Batcave, but with better lighting) to vote on one crucial matter: the official shorts of the summer. Prior summits have anointed Patagonia’s legendary Baggies, Gramicci’s mountain-scaling G shorts, and these ultra-preppy pleated joints from Lands’ End. The debate is fierce. Words are said; friendships are renounced; thighs are exposed. But without fail, the process yields promising new contenders for the crown, smoky flares beamed to desktops around the world with a single message: The shorts have been shortlisted.
Because accuracy is the sole non-negotiable here, we also know when it doesn’t feel right to crown one unmarred victor. And in 2025, shorts have taken a turn towards all kinds of extremes—hems have simultaneously blown past the knee, nearly kissing the ankles, and sneakily crept upwards, until they’re almost boxer shorts. The very notion of a scientifically correct inseam length has been all but obliterated. This year’s most-discussed male dresser steps out each day in something less predictable than the day before—anything, truly, goes.
This is nothing to panic about. It’s actually a victory for guys like you and I the world over, who are now free to simply wear… the shorts we like best right now. As a result, in a historic first, this year’s shorts summit was more of a Kumbuya moment. GQ editors, hand-in-hand, welcomed each other’s preferences in with warm nods, sincere affirmations, and loving knee-knocks. In the end, we crowned six of them—and, uhh, one pant—each different from the other in length, vibe, and silhouette. The true shorts of summer 2025, it turns out, might just be the friends we made along the way.
Outlier Injex Pleatedshorts
If I were to dream up the ideal summer short, it’d look an awful lot like Outlier’s Injex Pleatedshort. The cut is spot-on—four reverse pleats and just the right amount of volume—but the revelation is the fabric: a sick Japanese blend of warp-knit polyester and linen that breathes like mesh, drapes like linen, and feels like nothing. The polyester tempers the linen, so it doesn’t crease so sharply, which solves, in my opinion, the fabric’s most stubborn flaws. It’s technical without looking it, handsome without trying, and the kind of short that can serve approximately all the summer activities. —Michael Nolledo
Lemaire Maxi Pleated Bermuda Shorts
Lemaire
Beige Maxi Pleated Bermuda Shorts
My big, beautiful Filipino calves and quirky knock-kneed legs make pants a particularly difficult thing to shop for. Shorts, despite less fabric to deal with, are even more of a headache. Seven-inch inseams served me well for years before I decided to venture into droopier territory. I tested the waters with shorts that merely grazed my knees before diving straight past them into the deep end. Now my preferred shorts fall into a Twilight Zone between the calf and the ankle that’s difficult to define. Are they capris? Bermudas? Culottes? Are they even shorts at all? I remain defiantly indefinable. Lemaire’s pleated, uh, bottoms fit squarely in this gray area. I wouldn’t call them the shorts of the summer (not at that price tag, especially). But the baggy silhouette and plunging inseam is an alternative narrative in the shorts discourse that I’m very keen on listening to. —Gerald Ortiz
Banana Republic 7” Pleated Linen Short
Banana Republic
7″ Pleated Linen Short
I famously went shopping at Banana one day during working hours, and while I left empty handed (at the time), I couldn’t stop thinking about these pleated shorts. For the longest time, I thought shorter was better, but after trying these on, I realized that maybe it was time to ditch the five-inchers. OK, not across the board, but the longer inseam on these make them feel a little more dressed-up, able to rock with a nice oversized Oxford for an outfit that doesn’t look like I’ve given up on life just because it’s hot as hell. —Tyler Chin
J.Crew 5” Cotton Short with Piping
J.Crew
5″ cotton short with piping
I went searching for Josh O’Connor’s Challengers shorts on eBay, and came up short. These were the next best thing. I copped ‘em for half off during a big J.Crew sale a few weeks back and have worn them endlessly since, with thrashed band tees and breezy linen button-downs and everything in between (i.e. pique polos). They’re basically boxers that are socially acceptable to wear in public, which is more or less everything I could ever really want in a pair of shorts. —Yang-Yi Goh
Manresa Ravine Short
In an era of lost recipes, it’s rare for one to be rediscovered and even more rare for it to be faithfully followed. But against all odds, Manresa is cooking up some baggie-ass nylon shorts called The Ravine Short—in Bridgeport, CT, no less—with pretty much the exact same specs as the originator of the genre once did in the ‘90s. And before I got them, I thought the 5” Baggies (sized up) were close to perfect, but then I got these and they’re just better all around. They’re baggier than the current Baggies, come in better colors and, perhaps most importantly, have a slightly shorter pocket so your phone and keys don’t wage war on your knee while you’re walking around. (The pocket depth was the only real problem I ever had with Baggies.) I’ve worn mine at least 10 times since they came into my life three weeks ago, a number only tempered by my lack of in-unit laundry, but I’ve been wearing Manresa clothing for years. In fact, I had sent founder Mike McLachlan so many pictures of my friends and I wearing Manresa in the wild, I recently ended up official modelling for the brand. So yes, I am the person you see in the official photos of these shorts—but only because I was always going to be wearing them anyways. —Reed Nelson
Olympique de Marseille Soccer Shorts
Puma
Olympique de Marseille Men’s Soccer Shorts
I don’t need pockets on my shorts, because in the summer I prefer to wear a little Montbell pouch. I also don’t need shorts with any thickness, because if it’s cool enough for those fabrics, you’ll find me in loose pants instead. Instead, I need my shorts to be as light as possible, for those scorching days where truly nothing else will do. Turns out, soccer shorts fit the bill. I picked up this pair when I was in Marseille last summer, and didn’t expect them to get quite as much play as they still do (or still be available at Puma’s American website). But they’re swishy, relaxed, and visually-interesting enough to have elicited their fair share of compliments. Plus, wearing them makes me feel tapped into our current anything-goes style moment. Note: They already fall satisfyingly-low, but I sized up (there’s a drawstring) for a true right-above-the-knee length. —Louis Cheslaw
Polo Ralph Lauren Big Chinos
Ralph Lauren
The Big Chino
Here’s the situation, fellas: no matter how high that mercury soars, you ain’t going to catch me in shorts. Waiting for the G on a subway platform danker than your cousin’s memes? Pants. Re-upping on Cutwater, nectar of the gods, from the bodega down the street? Pants. Persuading your long-suffering colleagues to let you include pants in a short list of long shorts? I was wearing pants then, and I’m wearing pants now. If you’re one of the dozens of men who refuse to fall for the shorts propaganda this season—for the sake of common decency or, uh, your scrawny Ashkenazi calves—rest assured: you are not alone. My suggestion? Find a pair of weathered, near-threadbare chinos and wear ‘em with the type of reckless abandon endemic to your cousin’s online activity. Summer is fleeting, but pants are forever. —Avidan Grossman
