Road-Testing The Best Jeans For Travel

Aviator jeans are definitely ready to roll

Travel jeans are a bit of an oxymoron. Denim is famously durable but it’s a terrible fabric for hot weather destinations—sticky in Bangkok scooter traffic; slow to dry if you spill on the plane or get caught in equatorial rain. But that never stopped me from dragging my Levi’s on nearly every trip I’ve ever taken. In recent years, the options improved for travel pants, with miraculous materials that wick, breathe, stretch and endure, even if the designs weren’t always that fashionable.

Aviator changes the game on travel pants. The Los Angeles-based boutique brand founded by Colby Kane, a former art director for Macy’s, makes super-soft, slightly stretchy, impossibly comfortable jeans that actually keep you stylish in brutal tropical heat. I say this because I just experienced it. Last month in Vietnam, I alternated days between Aviator’s Concord Black jeans and their classic medium Dark Indigos, and I barely knew I was wearing jeans. This was Vietnam—in summer!