Let me tell you where the value is in this one, because it is not where you think. Everyone looks at velour and sees luxury. Look at the composition instead: ninety-three per cent polyester, seven per cent spandex. That seven per cent is the whole purchase. Velour with no stretch is a pair of curtains you have to walk in.
Velour with spandex moves, recovers, and does not go baggy at the knee by March — and a garment that does not bag out is a garment you are still wearing in three years, which is the only value calculation that matters.
Then check the fittings, because that is where corners get cut and it is where you find out what something is really worth. Rib-knit elasticated waistband with a metal-tipped drawcord — metal, not moulded plastic, and the plastic ones are what snap. The ST monogram embroidered at the left thigh, embroidery rather than a transfer.
Contrast double stripes down the legs.
Side-seam pockets. A zippered welt pocket at the rear right, and the zip is the tell: an unzipped back pocket is decoration, a zipped one holds a key. What it is not is a court trouser for hot weather — velour is plush and it is warm, and that is the honest trade for how it feels.
Rib-knit ankle cuffs, regular fit.
Kohima knows about honest accounting better than any town I have visited. The war cemetery steps down Garrison Hill in one thousand four hundred and twenty graves. That is the number. There is no other way to say it and no lesson I would dare attach to it. The Cathedral of Reconciliation above the town was raised partly with Japanese money, which is a harder and better thing than anything I could add.
Seven per cent spandex. That is the difference between three years of wear and one.
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