Carhartt Double Front Dungarees
September 12, 2009
It seems that gear today is all about ultralight, barely there, shave-every-ounce technical fabrics. If you’re in on that trend you likely wear lots of whisperlight clothing items weighed in ounces and divested of every last extra feature, because nothing weighs you down like a ten gram zipper pull. Ultralight gear certainly has its place, but for some assignments, only the tough will do. So when I accepted a gig demolishing and burning remote structures, I turned to the tried and true: Carhartt. Carhartt is the signature uniform of a true Alaskan, and for good reason – Carhartt gear is absolutely indestructible.
I knew I’d be facing some bushwhacking, hard travel, and grinding physical labor with hand tools, so I went with the standard classic Carhartt double front pants, with a double layer of denim on the fronts of the legs. This isn’t ordinary denim, either. I don’t know what it is but it’s much thicker and tougher than your designer jeans. It’s also thicker and tougher than the denim on regular Carhartt jeans, so I don’t know what the deal is with that. I do know that if you need your tender flesh protected from scrapes, cuts, and gouges, you can’t do better than Carhartt double front pants.
I wore the pants every day, 17 hours a day – much of which was hard labor – for five days, and they have no sign of wear, not so much as a fray or a scratch. And I don’t have so much as a scratch, either! Stomping around a demolished house, banging on things with sledgehammers, building giant bonfires, and using power tools to cut through metal are really great ways to ruin your clothes and cover your legs in bruises, but not with Carhartt. After a trip through the laundry they looked brand new, and my legs were protected completely. I can’t so much as walk to the laundry room without a fresh bruise, so this was a miracle.
I really must be Alaskan because I think the pants are also pretty cute. Maybe that is just the brainwashing brought on by living in this place for a long time – here, we look approvingly on Carhartts and suspiciously on designer shirts. If a dude showed up for a date in Seven jeans and a coiffed hairdo I’d probably laugh myself silly. I wonder why I don’t go out on many dates. hmm. But I really don’t think I had to sacrifice too much form for function with the Carhartts, and I added a pretty significant badass factor as well (in my own mind at least).
Now, be warned, they don’t have lycra or anything like that, so they don’t give at all. I wanted full mobility so I bought two sizes up and didn’t regret it. Even buying two sizes big, I didn’t end up with any gaps at the waist. This is a genius design that even $200 jeans can’t seem to get right. The pants shrunk a little in the wash, but since I bought big, it didn’t matter. They stretched out again pretty quickly. You’ll have a choice of leg lengths, something overlooked far too often on women’s pants. You get nice roomy pockets, that cool carpenter ruler pocket on the side, and nice boot-cut pants that fit well over, well, boots. You also get to have pants that will last for the next decade, and that’s worth $40 if you ask me.
