West LA Fadeaway

White Painters Pants, Dickies, USA

Nine times out of ten, “Dickies pants” means the 874, originally designed to be “work-matched” across multiple manual trades.

In 1980s SoCal it made its first major migration out of workwear. Chicano kids in LA wore super clean, pressed 874s — sometimes with the matching zip jacket — as a blank canvas for sharp presentation. Big focus on ironed creases — respect.

Then came the Crip / West Coast rap scene doing it differently: blue or khaki, low, pooling at the hem. Skate culture followed. Gangster aping, sure, but the functional bagginess also worked for movement. Welcome to Hell, the 1996 skate video, features Barley, Templeton, Steamer, Maldonado — all in Dickies. Then of course punk, Madonna at the Grammys, Gary Payton full look, Pete Davidson at the Emmys, etc.

It always comes back to the inherent quality of the pant: durability, loose fit, low cost. Today, Dickies retains such strong cultural ties to the region that parent company VF Corp moved headquarters to Costa Mesa.
Dickies are pure LA.