LS&Co. Unzipped

Dec 07 2010

Getting Inside Men's Pants

If the headline here causes you to consider anything other than the work of a fashion designer…get your mind out of the gutter – and read on.

Meet Jamie Sakamoto. You may “wear the pants,” as the Dockers® tag line says. Jamie and her colleagues design them.

Jamie’s a design director and a newcomer to the brand. But she comes with plenty of company experience. Before joining Dockers®, she worked for more than 13 years at the Levi’s® brand. And most of that time was spent designing pants. And jeans, of course.

Why her focus on, as they say in the apparel industry, “men’s bottoms?”

“I love pants!” is Jamie’s simply-put response.

The creative aspects of her work are what you’d expect: picking color palettes and choosing fabrics, and coming up with little details and “big ideas.”

What are big ideas? Those to which consumers respond. And how do designers come up with them? You name it. From watching consumers on the street…to poring over obscure fashion magazines…to studying trends and second-guessing color forecasts.

And some ideas – both big and little – come from history.

As we spoke, Jamie showed me some vintage pants the designers had purchased…dating back decades. Some were frayed. Others were ripped. Each pair had details that made it special. Jamie and her team examine every aspect – how the pants wore over time, what kind of buttons or snaps were used, hanging loops, the hand stamping, and even how a label was sewn in.

How are these details interpreted for today?

Back in the day, your dad or granddad’s khakis might’ve had two loops on the inside of the waistband – one on each hip. These would’ve been used to hold the pants on a hanger, to minimize wrinkles.

Jamie then showed me a pair of Dockers® khakis from the Spring 2011 collection. One detail that leaped out – a single, orange “locker loop.” Its bright color – orange is a Dockers® branding detail – and the fact that there was only one loop, located on the center of the inside waistband, was the modern interpretation of a decades-old idea.

The two loops might have worked years ago, but the single loop works now – in your locker, for instance, after an afternoon workout.

So what’s it like designing the Dockers® of tomorrow, keeping in mind the history of khakis, which are, after all, steeped in all things military? A constant balancing act, according to Jamie.

If you go too far in either direction – past or future – you’re not being authentic to the brand’s style. Dockers® is not trying to reproduce military wear from World War 2, nor is it trying to be too far fashion-forward. Neither is what its consumers are after.

A quick example, looking backward: button-up pants. Old military button-ups might’ve had a five or six buttons and hooks to deal with, tediously. Now, men are in more of a hurry to put their pants on – or, for that matter, take them off – so a button-fly of today tends to be simpler.

Now that you’ve gotten to know her, you have good reason to get inside men’s pants yourself…to see how Jamie and her colleagues are interpreting trends, history, colors and details -- and bringing them to life for Dockers® men around the world.

Posted By: Cory Warren, Editor, LS&Co. Unzipped
	Tags: Dockers®,Dockers®,Fashion

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