Manpri Summer: How Men’s Shorts Got So Long

Here’s the brief story: men’s shorts are getting longer.

It was just three summers ago that young men were shifting to 5-inch inseam garments that barely cloaked one’s upper thighs.

Cut to today, and a new wind has blown in, sending maxi-length shorts to our shores. It’s the summer of the manpri.

“The pendulum is swinging pretty far right now with the baggy shorts,” said Kevin Carney, the co-owner of Mohawk General Store, a men’s clothing boutique in Los Angeles. While certainly still offering a medley of abbreviated models, Mohawk’s dangly short assortment is expanding. It sells past-the-knee-length Bermudas from Jacquemus, Studio Nicholson and its in-house brand Smock. Its lengthiest option is a honking pair of calf-kissing bloomers from Japanese label Sillage that Carney plainly described as “huge.”

The protracted short was on full display during Paris men’s fashion week last month. Kenzo presented cargoed culottes that barely left a sliver of shin exposed; Givenchy sent out dressy shorts that landed three-quarters of the way down the model’s legs; and Louis Vuitton offered a ballooning pair nearly as wide as they were long.

Even before this summer, vintage-hounding, Gen-Z shoppers were already going long. “Everyone that I ask, they’re looking for the longer shorts, like something that goes past your knees,” said Ernest Valenzuela, 22, who works in a Toronto vintage shop. He said that in the past two months the store has stocked up on somewhere between 120 and 150 pairs of extended-inseam shorts. 

Valenzuela himself has been drawn to pendulous jorts recently, claiming that shorter shorts are affectedly athletic. A shorter inseam “makes you feel like you’re about to go to the gym or something,” he said.

That succinct sportiness was once billed as an asset. Men of a certain gym-membership level relished showing off their toned upper legs. Many, of course, still do. Chubbies, a popular neo-prep brand specializing in well-above-the-knee shorts, advertised “Thigh Guy Summer” on its website. 

But as with anything in fashion, the onslaught of shorter shorts over the past few summers has driven some the other way. The look has “gotten saturated,” said James Harris, the co-host of the popular men’s fashion podcast Throwing Fits. He now associates the look with “white male frat boys,” which he called a “death knell” for any trickle-down fashion trend. 

Once risqué, it is now rote to flash some thigh. Instead, said Mr. Harris, “the sluttiness has moved north,” pointing to the surge of lace shirts and crop tops among the fresh-faced and trend-conscious in cities like New York and Los Angeles. 

The fluctuation in men’s shorts—Daisy Duke-length one summer, manpris the next—shows how the pace of menswear trends is accelerating. It once took years, if not decades for men to rethink their lapel widths or trouser lengths. 

Shoppers are fickle these days, more swayed by what they see on apps like TikTok and Instagram and less rigid in their thinking about what they wear. “Men are way more open to trying,” said Agyesh Madan, the co-founder of New York brand Stoffa. Customers that previously purchased terse shorts are progressing toward the brand’s new wider-set, knee-length shorts, he said.  

To be sure, baggy shorts have been hanging around for ages. Willy Chavarria, a New York designer, noted that for many today, the touchpoint for long shorts are ’90s skateboarders or rappers such as the Notorious B.I.G., who favored ginormous work shorts. “It really harkens back to that era of hip-hop,” he said. 

In his designs, Chavarria favors substantial silhouettes, including relaxed shorts that stretch down to one’s shins, which have recently been worn on stage by Kendrick Lamar. Chavarria said he takes inspiration from the Pachuco culture of the ’40s, where intrepid Chicanos wore zoot suits made of miles of fabric—proof that the big fits are hardly novel.

Most elongated-short supporters aren’t thinking of history when buying some 12-inch inseam cargoes, they just want to be comfortable. Long shorts “look more relaxed,” said Valenzeula. There is a low-effort ease to a pair of hulking, off-the-body shorts that contrasts with the shrunken showiness of some Daisy Dukes. 

Even as inseams travel southward, it’s possible to go too long. The podcaster Harris noted that on a recent vacation in Italy he saw a man in skinny, capri-length shorts. Harris wasn’t a fan. “Where do you draw the line?” he said. While acknowledging that some just-barely-above-the-ankle JNCOs can look right on some people, he tends to stick to shorts that are 2 to 3 inches below the knee. 

“The perfect length is like right below the knee,” agreed Mertz Nicolson, 21, a student in Berkeley, Calif., who has recently taken to wearing lengthy jorts. “I saw a picture of someone who had baggy shorts all the way to their ankles, and I was like, I don’t know if that’s it.”

Write to Jacob Gallagher at [email protected]