Love 'em or hate 'em, whales pants are a cornerstone of the preppy American experience.

From fun-loving beach bums to captains of industry, men and women from shore to shore have been slipping into pants adorned with stylized whales in multitudes of color palettes for generations. Our family has spent more time designing, crafting, stocking, folding, selling, wearing and laughing at whale pants than almost anybody. If you were to carve our tombstones today, we are only sort-of ashamed to admit you would have to mention whale pants somehow.

Exactly how this came to be is long, complicated account.

New England fishing and whaling ports are now almost all hosts to throngs of summer residents and tourists doing whatever they consider to be the opposite of work. Curiously, everyone is fascinated in the labor that once defined these places. Folks decorate their homes with oars, harpoons, line (rope) and other tools of the trade.

However, nothing has quite captured the imagination of summer lay-abouts more than the whale. The whale is the main character in our favorite books, there are whaling museums, whale weathervanes and of course, whale pants.

Where exactly the whale pant was born is unknown. Some wonder if the retired whale boat captains missed the stains of whale on their attire and their wives stitched whales into their pants nostalgically. Just kidding!

For a long time, whale pants were a niche product. But in the early 1980s, two events changed the history of haberdashery:

First, in 1980, The Official Preppy Handbook comes out and outlines not only the fashionable nature of preppy clothing, but details the finer points of embroidered clothing. And then in 1982, Penn State Lions Head Coach Joe Paterno wears a pair of khaki pants with blue whales onto the field, much to the shock of the players, opponents and fans. Possibly as a joke, rumored to be his only clean pants that day, or maybe divine intervention, his decision swelled the stadium with laughter and awe. That was silenced after the Lions proceeded to go 10 and 1 and Paterno went on to become one of the greatest coaches of all time.

Michael Weinreb, author of The Kings of New York says “The whale pants represented an ethic, a morality, the complete lack of self-regard that enveloped Paterno at the height of his creative genius in the 1980s.” Character traits the summer set admired, and now a uniform to express it . . .

History was sealed. Whale pants are now part of the coastal preppy fashion vernacular. So firmly entrenched in the style that even mocking them provides further proof of their merit.

If you have ever worn a rope bracelet, know what a jibsheet is or love a Dark & Stormy, you need to own a pair of whale pants. Order them right here.