The Coolest Pants in the Universe are Only $50

They come in cow print, tiger print..basically every print imaginable.

The first time I learned about the pants was through my friend Eileen Townsend, who, in addition to being a brilliant artist, is one of the most stylish people I have ever met.

Eileen is from Memphis, Tennessee, has a tattoo of a catfish on her arm, and a highly developed sense of irony. She’s always crafting borderline Dadaist accessories, like a vintage purse covered in rubber telephone cord, or wearing one-of-a-kind pieces like earrings made out of thrift store price tags (made by her friend Amelia Rice). She’s a true original; I can’t imagine anyone else who would be equally at home in a pair of Gramicci hiking pants vs. a floor-length leather trench coat.

The pants in question.

Anyway, a few years ago, I visited Eileen in LA and noticed she had on a pair of incredible tiger print pants highly reminiscent of Traci Lords in Cry Baby. With greed and covetousness in my heart, I asked where she had found the pants, expecting her to say they were multiple hundreds of dollars and no longer available at the indie designer boutique she had bought them from. Instead, she casually tossed off they were industrial chef pants means to be worn by restaurant professionals and had only set her back $50.

The brand, Cookman USA, has an outpost planted on Abbott Kinney Boulevard and sells virtually indestructible cotton-polyester pants to kitchen staff and other passersby who might want to resemble someone with a passing familiarity of the term “back of house.” The store has an unexpected Japanese rockabilly vibe—checkerboard floor, ‘50s diner stools—which feels a bit incongruous amidst the sea of aggressively curated shops hawking chopped salads or Danish designer clothes nearby, but that’s also in part what gives it so much charm.

Walk in and you are immediately confronted with wall-to-wall red lacquer shelving units filled with a brain-melting cacophony of colours and patterns. Cow print! Camo! Giraffe! Pinstripe! Checkerboard! Rainbow splatter paint! As a renowned lover of novelty pants—leopard print, two-tone black and white, you name it I have it—I was in heaven. The selection borderline turned me into one of those lovestruck cartoon wolves whose eyeballs bulge precariously out of their head every time they see a beautiful woman. I tried on a few styles, but none tickled me quite as much as the tiger print, sold out in my size, so I left empty-handed. But every so often, when I’m in a shoppy mood, I think of the miraculous chef pants and admire their joyful array from afar.

Chef pants have been on my mind lately because for fun, I’ve enrolled in a cooking class which involves me wearing an actual chef uniform. I even have to buy special steel-toe, non-slip footwear before I’m allowed in the kitchen. (Apparently the best ones are the Birkenstock Pros, which my friend Vidal says are the ones all the real chefs wear.) For some reason, the idea of leaning into my newfound chefdom by wearing the most stereotypical chef outfit imaginable—checkerboard pants, white lab coat, clogs—is helping me get into the zone. I know exactly where to find the best checkerboard pants…