1980s Banana Republic Wide-Leg Chinos, Mill Valley - British Colony of Hong Kong - W33"

Measured flat: Waist 33 in. Hips 40 in. Rise 11.5 in. Inseam 29.5 in. Thigh 24 in. Leg opening 18 in.

Read the thigh against the opening and you have the trouser. Twenty-four inches at the thigh down to eighteen at the hem is a wide, full leg that barely narrows - it falls rather than tapers. Add an eleven and a half inch rise sitting at the natural waist, and these are cut the way trousers were before everything went low and narrow. An eighteen inch opening is wide by any standard and very wide by the standards of the last twenty years.

Tagged 34 and measuring 33.

They have been hemmed. The inseam is 29.5.

Condition: good. Honest wear, nothing to hide.

Six pockets, and no two pairs of them match. Two slash pockets at the front, a coin pocket, and at the back one flap pocket and one flat pocket - deliberately not a matching pair. That asymmetry is the whole Banana Republic idea in miniature: the flap protects what you cannot afford to lose, the open pocket is for what you need quickly, and nobody put them there to look tidy. Ordinary chinos give you two identical back pockets because symmetry is cheaper to think about.

Flat front, no pleats. The eighties are remembered for pleats and most chinos from the period have them.

Three marks date these and they agree. Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony on 1 July 1997, so no garment labelled that way can be later. The Mill Valley address belongs to the original company, whose safari concept was gone by 1990. And the fly is a YKK zip, which took the American market from the 1980s where Talon had held it before. Three independent things, none of which knows about the other two, pointing at the same decade.

Mill Valley is the whole point, because it means this is the original company. Banana Republic was founded in 1978 by Mel and Patricia Ziegler, on $1,500 of savings and an American Express card, after Mel brought home a surplus jacket from Australia that Patricia admired for its cloth and its four pockets. They sold army surplus at flea markets until it outgrew them, then opened a storefront in Mill Valley fitted out like a jungle trading post. The full name was the Banana Republic Travel & Safari Clothing Company.

It was famous for its catalogues before it was famous for anything else - hand-drawn in ink and watercolour, selling flight jackets, photo-journalists' vests, paratrooper briefcases and gurkha shorts, with the drawings doing work no photograph could.

And then it ended, on a date you can name. Gap bought the company in 1983, when there were five stores in California. The safari concept began to slide from 1986, the Zieglers left in 1988, and by 1990 it was gone entirely - replaced by the khaki-and-suiting mall brand that still carries the name. A Mill Valley label belongs to the years before that.

100% cotton. Machine wash cold, hang dry.

Modern size: 33 x 29.5 (waist x inseam, in inches).

One of one. Sold as found.

No returns - as is.