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The Pants That Fade on Purpose: A Brief History of Nantucket Reds

How a pair of fading pink pants became the unofficial uniform of East Coast privilege and the rare menswear icon that improves through neglect.

Every June, the Hy-Line ferry from Hyannis unloads onto Nantucket's Straight Wharf carrying coolers, garment bags and a statistically improbable number of men dressed like undercooked salmon. Their trousers occupy a color spectrum somewhere between faded watermelon and a spectacularly healing sunburn. The initiated call them Nantucket Reds, and they'll insist the whole point is that they look better the more they fall apart. It's an unusual sales proposition. Most clothing promises to hold up over time. Nantucket Reds are the only American trousers whose warranty runs in reverse: guaranteed to fade.

The genius belongs to Philip C. Murray, second-generation owner of Murray's Toggery Shop, the Main Street institution his father bought in 1945. The building's retail pedigree predates the family—R.H. Macy ran a dry goods store on the site in 1843 before decamping to found a certain Herald Square department store—but it was Philip C. who, in the early 1960s, introduced a cotton canvas pant inspired by the red sails he'd seen off the coast of Brittany. Breton fishermen had tanned their sailcloth with tree bark to fight mildew; sun and salt bleached the result from brick to blush. Murray bottled the decay and sold it as a feature.

The pants might have stayed an island eccentricity if John F. Kennedy hadn't been filmed golfing in conspicuously........

© Observer