Bills are made from a parade ground-proper nine-ounce cotton twill. They have drill-cloth pockets so deep you need to dredge for change, plenty of room for comfort and a style that evokes distant echoes of marching boots and the manly stanzas of Sousa.

They did not come by such a heritage accidentally. Bill Thomas, the thirtyish former adman who is the creator of these martial masterpieces, bought army-surplus khakis as a college student until the supply dried up. "What I liked about them," he says, "is that they were so straightforward and so well made in their own simple, dumb way." Dumb, maybe like some old sergeant who thinks Catch-22 is a baseball stat but who can definitely get your tail out of a jam. Endearing and enduring. Not simply something to wear, but, says Thomas, "more like a piece of equipment."

After college Thomas went back to his hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania, "on a mission," and in 1985 he started a small company to make classic khakis. Today he turns out a modest 25,000 pairs annually and sells them for between $70 and $85 through mail order and a select 125 stores. "We take a microbrewer's approach," Thomas says. "We're always just at the edge of being able to handle the demand." Unlike the khakis themselves, which can surely handle with ease any snafu Zeus throws your way. - OWEN EDWARDS