Ivory Wide Leg Hakama Trousers 'Hakuun'

Ivory wide-leg trousers in a slubbed cotton, the hakama cut with patch pockets

White trousers this wide are a summer on their own. They fall from a soft drawstring waist in a straight, wide leg to the ankle, with a large patch pocket on each thigh, in an ivory cotton whose slubbed weave gives it the look of a coarse linen and the softness of the cotton it is. Nothing is printed on them. The weave and the width are the design.

It is the pair for the hottest month, for a terrace, for a beach with a restaurant on it, and for the person who has always wanted white trousers and never found a pair that forgave a day.

The name, Hakuun, means white cloud, the cumulus of a summer sky, and the trousers are that white with that much air in them.

The cloth is cotton with a dry, visibly slubbed hand, chosen because trousers this wide need weight to swing and air to breathe, and cotton gives both. It washes cold, hangs, and softens with every wash.

Wear them with a white tee for the full column, as in the photograph, or with a navy tee, or with the black jinbei top from elsewhere in the range. White trainers, or leather sandals. A belt if you want a waist, though the drawstring is enough.

The waist is a soft band with a drawstring finished in black-tipped cords, the one dark detail. The legs are cut straight from the hip and swing. The pockets are patch pockets, open, deep enough for a wallet.

From across a street they are wide white trousers. From close the slub shows in every inch of the weave, the cords show their tips, and the pockets show their stitching. They are the trousers that look like a holiday and wash like a T-shirt.

The width comes from the hakama and the pockets come from a painter's trouser, and the two have been married before, in Japan, on the men who wear this exact garment to a summer festival with a happi coat over it. The pair is that tradition with the print left off.

It goes with navy, with black, with the whole of the jinbei range, and with a tan that has taken a week. Wash it with the whites and it comes back white, which is the one promise a pair of white trousers has to keep.

Sizes run from M to 5XL. It is cut to Asian sizing and runs small, so take one size up from your usual. Between two sizes, take the larger.