Why you won’t catch me in madras pants at the office any more - not even on a Friday

The Battle of Madras, in which French forces captured the city of Madras from its British garrison, took place 276 years ago this month in India. More recently and closer to home, hostilities came to pass in a lesser known dust-up in the heart of uptown Charlotte — about a decade ago.

Memories of that brief and bloodless struggle come to mind this time of year, as summer weather wanes and autumn beckons. Skirmishes that began and ended within the three-month solstitial window grew out of an event fashion-war historians call the Second Battle of Madras.

Don’t bother looking for a historical plaque anywhere around North Carolina; none exits. It happened, though, as surely as paisleys are passé. I would know, for it was my war. I unwittingly fired the first shot in the conflict one Friday, choosing to beat the heat by wearing a pair of madras pants to the office.

Younger swells on my hall, who know things like pleats aren’t coming back, urged me to cease and desist. A line in the sand had been drawn, not unlike that in India nearly three centuries earlier. For if there are two things in life I cherish it’s comfortable slacks and not being told what to do. I simply had to respond.

The cannonade of my reply came, like matching cufflinks, in two parts.

First, I assured these stylish savants I would disregard their fashion forewarning. Second, I vowed to wear only the patchiest of patchwork pants each Friday for the rest of summer. On that day whenever my schedule permitted — and it did often — I channeled Al Czervik, Rodney Dangerfield’s overbright character from “Caddyshack,” from the waist-down. If the tradition began whimsically, though, it ended abruptly.

One Friday morning, bedecked in baleful britches, I was joined on the elevator by a stranger about my age, someone I sensed was surreptitiously eyeballing my trunks. He confirmed this suspicion when he broke time-honored elevator protocol and spoke: “You must be that guy in our building I’ve heard about who wears bad pants on Friday.”

I nodded, smiled and remained quiet, but only for a moment. After all, this is the South, which as everyone knows is the land of not frontal assaults but glancing blows. “You know something, my friend?” I mused. “You took an awfully big chance saying that to me.” Then came his riposte.

“Not that big a chance,” he replied, sizing me up one last time for good measure. The elevator door opened at his floor, he exited, and I rode in silence to my own floor, aware of only the faint echo of a recent mic drop.

Sweltering summer temperatures notwithstanding, it was the last time I wore madras pants to the office.

I never did get his name, my quick-witted elevator companion. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, to learn he counts Chinese master strategist Sun Tzu as a distant ancestor. Not only did he give me a golden bridge to retreat across and end the trivial tussle. He reminded me the supreme art of war — military and sartorial — is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

This story was originally published September 6, 2022 at 4:30 AM with the headline "Why you won’t catch me in madras pants at the office any more - not even on a Friday."