Carhartt Vintage Double Knee Thrashed Khaki Shorts

These are vintage Carhartt Double Knee work shorts in khaki duck canvas, cut down from a pair of double-front pants and left with raw, frayed hems. They're for someone who wants genuinely worn-in workwear — paint, blowouts and all — rather than a new pair they'd have to break in themselves.

They're built from Carhartt's heavy cotton duck with the brand's reinforced double-knee front panels, a brass-finish waist button, a hammer loop and a side utility pocket. Years of use have left white and pale green paint across the front and both legs, open blowouts with fraying around the knee panel, and shredded, stringy hems. The double-knee construction is still the reason the pair holds up: that second layer of canvas across the front takes the abuse that would wear straight through an ordinary short.

What separates them from a new pair of Carhartt shorts is that none of this was manufactured. The paint, the fading and the holes came from real work, so the wear pattern belongs to this pair only. Buy them if you want workwear that already looks lived in.

Available here in size 36.