Usually when we dispense style advice on this site, we’re doing nothing more than rehashing the tried and true basics along with a little local color and a lot of personal bias. Unlike a great number of bloggers operating in the menswear category, You’ll never see us hyping up a Gilt flash sale or suckling at the teat of Manhattan department stores.

So today’s post is a little unconventional in that it’s technically a half step above what qualifies as ‘basic’ style. Everybody’s got a pair of jeans, and almost everybody has a pair or two of khaki/greyish/neutral chinos to back them up with, but going out and spending $60 or so on a pair of colored pants is something of a leap of faith for most guys.

This Summer it’s a leap we’re making and embracing, and colored chinos have become one of our favorite hot-weather looks.

For us, it’s almost out of bare necessity. We’re still stubborn about embracing shorts, and if you’re wearing shorts around (especially cargo shorts) and you’re over the age of 15 you can assume we’re quietly judging you at all times. But still, wearing slim jeans all day every day during the Summer months is also ill advised for obvious reasons. On top of that, our adherence for the understated basics has led to a closet full of white/whitish/neutral pattern shirts at the Chophouse.

So with it being too hot to add in sweaters and jackets and ties for color, we’ve been forced to add color to our pants, and a little goes a long way. We found the above image at deanstreetsociety.com in a colored chinos post by personal stylist Hilary Rushford and it illustrates perfectly how to pull off colored pants in Baltimore City.

These guys are both well dressed and comfortable, and you can put this look together in about 30 seconds to keep yourself cool all Summer. The only tsk-tsk detail we can spot is that the guy on the left hasn’t got any socks. If we’ve said it once we’ve said it a thousand times: Socks Are Not Optional.