British-Made Men's Chinos — Voted by the Community

Chino cloth is a hard-wearing cotton twill that grew out of the khaki uniforms of the British Army in India. Khaki, from a Hindustani word meaning soil-coloured, was introduced for the Corps of Guides on the North-West Frontier in the late 1840s, replacing brightly coloured tunics with plain earth tones. British troops first wore khaki officially on the 1868 expedition to Abyssinia, used it widely in the Second Boer War, and adopted it for service dress in 1902. American soldiers wore similar twill trousers in the Philippines during the Spanish–American War of 1898, and veterans brought them home. Nobody is sure where the word “chino” comes from: a popular story links it to the Spanish word for Chinese, but dictionaries record the origin as unknown. After the Second World War, surplus army trousers sold widely in American shops and returning soldiers wore them at college, which took chinos firmly into everyday clothing. Today chinos are a staple of casual and smart-casual wardrobes, made from strong cotton twill and cut for comfortable everyday wear.