Just what is with the chefs and the ugly pants?

August 7, 2008 5:02 PM

Why is it that one often sees professional chefs outfitted in pants with ridiculous (some might say ugly) pattern prints such as these or these? Is there some logical explanation that I'm not aware of or do these chefs just have exotic taste in fashion?
posted by iamisaid to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (13 answers total)

The serve as an obvious uniform and they hide spills and stains.

Right? :)
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 5:14 PM on August 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

They look like nursing scrubs, which are also a work uniform designed to get dirty, stand up to abuse, look clean the next day, be cheap to replace, etc.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 5:21 PM on August 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: The hiding stains possibility occurred to me, but then I realized that I often see them wearing these kind of pants along with solid-white chef jackets, which surely get dirty quite easily. It seems to me that if they want their top half to look professional, they'd wear better looking pants - or at least a solid color. It's not that they're baggy or loose or cheap, I just think they look a little silly.
posted by iamisaid at 5:28 PM on August 7, 2008

Where I cooked, they provided us with laundered jackets, but we supplied our own pants. Also, if you're only in the back of the house, it's fine to wear the patters and stuff. Also, it's easy to bleach the white tops.
posted by glip at 5:36 PM on August 7, 2008

Chef pants are very comfy and less confining than regular pants, which is great when you are slaving over a hot stove for 8 hours, and the obnoxious prints are just to break up the monotony of having to wear the houndstooth checkers.
posted by briank at 5:37 PM on August 7, 2008

glip writes "Where I cooked, they provided us with laundered jackets, but we supplied our own pants."

Practically every kitchen is like this. And it's because, around here anyways, clean jackets are a health code thing. You can't depend on your staff to clean their own jackets properly so you provide them. And they are white so the health inspector can tell if staff are cleaning their hands on their jackets.
posted by Mitheral at 5:56 PM on August 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

The pants take more splatters and spills than the jackets/shirts. Think about it: anything that hits you high enough to stain your shirt can also fall and hit your pants. But some things fall from a lower height or splatter at you in a longer arc and will hit your pants but not your shirt. Ergo: it's more important to have stain-hiding pants than shirts. Also: cooks may have to kneel sometimes, which, in an active kitchen, will scuff up the knees awful quick.

The white jacket actually performs the same trick: making the chef appear clean. It's simply too much to ask to keep white pants clean. The shirt can be done. It can also be changed easily.
posted by scarabic at 5:57 PM on August 7, 2008

Also, the window to the kitchen (if there is one) is often at such a height that jackets can be seen but pants cannot.
posted by Caviar at 6:26 PM on August 7, 2008

I can't tell you the number of times my husband has worn his chef pants outside of work, he just thinks the baggy style is the most comfortable pair of pants he's ever owned.

As for the crazy designs, a lot of people like to have pants that in some way reflect the style of food they serve or like. So yeah, he had chili pepper pants at his first head cook job at a Tex-Mex place. Pant color can also be used to distinguish the cooks from the chefs and sous chefs in some restaurants. He's worked in a few places where the Exec Chef, as well as the Chefs for Pastry, Garde Manger etc. wore black pants, while all the line cooks wore the classic houndstooth. I think that happens in a lot of restaurants where the Chef chooses an exotic style to set him/herself off from the rank and file cooks.
posted by saffry at 6:28 PM on August 7, 2008

The houndstooth/checkered/pinestripe pattern doesn't hide stains, it camouflages them. Thus it makes it harder to distinguish a small stain from the pattern itself. The obnoxious multi-colored patterns do an ever better job of camouflaging the stains because most stains aren't black or white - they're red, yellow, or green. So if some tomato sauce falls on your pants, it would be harder to distinguish it from the peppers print than say a black-and-white checkered print.

Whereas the pants and aprons are designed to camouflage stains, the white jackets are a sign of cleanliness. You may have also noticed they're double-breasted. That's so they can be worn in reverse, ie. two attempts at looking clean.

Nowadays, I think the crazy prints are chosen just for fun like the nurses with funky scrubs or cool-looking stethoscopes.
posted by junesix at 6:36 PM on August 7, 2008

I'm inclined to go with odd taste / sense of humour. (I personally suspect drunken late-night pant ordering) ...they seem to be an American thing? I've never seen in in Europe, though I have in the US. Mr. Jane is a professional chef who has never worn anything but solid black or hounds tooth.
posted by InfinateJane at 3:38 AM on August 8, 2008

My wife's chef coats are not exactly double breasted but they can be buttoned the other way, so maybe reversable is the word I'm looking for. Oops, se above.
posted by fixedgear at 5:37 AM on August 8, 2008

I. Jane, not an American thing- plenty of Italian chefs wear them.
posted by baklavabaklava at 9:49 AM on August 8, 2008