I spent years thinking black shorts were a holiday item, something to throw on for the airport and then forget about until the following June. What changed that was wearing a pair with bare legs and trainers on an ordinary Tuesday and realising they did the job of a skirt without any of the faffing about with hemlines in the wind. Now I treat them as proper clothing, not a concession to hot weather.
They come into their own from late spring through to early autumn, worn with a plain top and flat sandals for anything from a supermarket run to a lunch where you can't quite work out the dress code. A longer pair with a loose shirt and boots will even carry you into a mild October, which surprised me the first time I tried it. Where they fall short is anything formal or anything cold. A black short, however well cut, is not going to pass for office wear in most places, and it will not keep your knees warm in a proper British spring, whatever the catalogue photography might suggest.
The difference between a good pair and a poor one shows up fast, usually after the first wash. Cheap ones go thin at the inner thigh within a few wears, the seams start to pucker, and the black fades to a flat grey that no amount of careful washing will put right. A better pair has some weight to the fabric, a proper lining if they're tailored, and a waistband that doesn't curl over on itself after a day of sitting down. Check the zip too. A metal one with a decent pull will outlast a cheap plastic zip by years, and it's usually the first thing to go on a poorly made pair, catching or splitting at the worst moment.
I've had a linen blend pair for three summers now, folded into bags, left crumpled in the bottom of a wardrobe over winter without ever being hung up properly, and they've held their shape at the waist and barely faded. That tells you more about quality than any label does. A good black short actually gets better with wear, the fabric softening slightly and sitting looser in a way that feels earned rather than worn out. The ones to be wary of are the stiff, shiny sort that look sharp on the first outing and then crease and sag by the third, never quite recovering. Age is the real test, and black shorts that are still black, still holding their line, after a full season of actual use are the ones worth having.
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