Collection: Dickies

C. N. Williamson and E. E. Dickie, nicknamed the Colonel, were cousins and traders who spent a quarter-century selling hats across south-western Texas. In 1922 they took over a small overall company, renamed it the Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Company and began sewing clothing for farmers and ranchers in Fort Worth. The motto was straightforward: honest value for an honest dollar. The company survived the Depression and during the Second World War sewed millions of uniforms for the US Army, including a jacket favoured by General Eisenhower. The defining product, however, arrived only in April 1967: the 874 trousers, named drily by sequence because they followed models 871, 872 and 873. A cotton-polyester blend, straight cut, stain- and wrinkle-resistant, a fit that suits every build. Trousers for mechanics and labourers that have been sewn virtually unchanged ever since. Then something happened that nobody in Fort Worth had planned: from the 1980s onward the 874 was gradually adopted by skaters, the West Coast and hip hop, because it was indestructible, cheap and flattering on everyone. Today it is worn by the car mechanic and the fashion-week visitor alike, often the very same pair. Dickies is the rare case of a brand that became fashionable by ignoring fashion for a hundred years. A cut that outlasted every trend because it never followed one.