If you have had the recent joy of walking through New York’s Penn Station, you will have seen the new campaign for Dockers in all its glory. As ubiquitous in the building as khaki pants themselves, the marketing expresses a simple charge - “Wear the Pants.”

A universal notion, “Wear the Pants” hinges on essential themes of what it is to be a man through a play on an essential garment, the khaki. Relegated, for a time, to casual Fridays and the office cubical, Dockers hopes to ignite a resurgence. Their offerings are broad, fitting the global nature of the brand, the line ranging from the soft khaki (a collection of washed, color khakis) to high-end reproductions of Levi’s original K-1 (a 1940s military pant).

Levi’s has never forgotten the khaki’s role in company heritage. A marvelous book, Khaki: Cut From the Original Cloth, was published by the brand in 1999. Collecting images of khakis in different context, the book serves to hammer down a garment truth - no pant is more universal than the khaki. Viewed in war and leisure; comfortable in the smoke-filled jazz halls of 1950s Manhattan and on the Ivy-clad college campus, no other pant treads so many situations with such easy grace. Richard Martin, in his introductory essay, writes, “Without obtrusive meaning of their own, khakis are a peaceful core of comfort dress.”

In essence, khakis are the core of the everyday. A wardrobe staple. A trouser for any action. And, a trouser in which any action can be achieved.

The heritage of the khaki is essential to wearing the pants, mainly in the trousers utility and simplicity. Few other garments manage to tread so easily through the full spectrum of fashion.

“Wear the Pants,” follows these truths.

For our look at Dockers, Nathan Laffin, head designer, shared his thoughts on khakis through time and how the new collection fits the current campaign. To fill out the story Jen Sey, Vice President President of Dockers Global Brand Marketing, chatted with us briefly about the thinking behind “Wear the Pants.”