The Aether Kelso Pant is billed as an active traveler’s pant, something that is comfortable, stretchy, and doesn’t wrinkle. This is a highly technical material pant — it’s not something trying to be a stealth dress item, it is a performance pant which has been cut and designed to be fashionable and comfortable.
Material
Aether calls this a stretch woven nylon, which comes out to be 93% nylon, 7% spandex. In reality, that description sells this pant short. This is a material that feels like a dead ringer for Outlier’s OG Cloth, and extremely similar to Oliver’s Passage Pant (our review) material. It has a smooth outer face, and a somewhat brushed inner face — giving it almost a soft shell like feel.
All the while being breathable and stretchy.
Performance
I really did not know what to expect with these. There are basically only a few ‘performance’ claims about them with Aether: comfort, stretch, and they don’t wrinkle. I mean, not a ton to go on.
It exceeds all those claims, by the way. If you hang the pants weird, they will wrinkle and those wrinkles will disappear almost immediately when you put the pants on — there is some sort of magic there. They are also very comfortable, whenever I test pants made of this material I am giddy because it truly is only rivaled by the comfort of sweatpants, or ‘joggers’ in modern parlance.
And yes they stretch. The 7% stretch does not tell the full story because the pants are actually cut pretty close to your body — they are skinny — and yet I have no ever once been limited in my movement. I can’t imagine anyone concluding that it would be nice if these pants had more stretch.
They also dry fast, as you would expect from a mostly nylon pant. They do a good job resisting stains and wiping clean. They breath well, not as well as the similar fabrics from Outlier or Oliver’s, but that also makes them a little more versatile as those breath so well that they can wear cold in strong A/C or in cooler temps.
A good performance pant is defined by a pant that you can put on when you wake up, and never need to change out of until it is time to go to bed. These are 100% that. They are probably 10% less breathable than others I have tried, but they move better the the Oliver’s material. In fact, I think these give OG Cloth a run for their money — but I don’t have any pants in OG Cloth on hand to directly compare to.
A-plus performance.
Fit & Style
The fit and style of these is different than anything else I have tried. They are very skinny, and most skinny pants hit me very tight in the calves. But these are somewhat tight in the calves. They are very snug in the knees, which I have not experienced before.
But unlike most skinny pants, they are extremely comfortable as the waist itself stretches too. The entire pant, fits very well, and because of how close cut it is, the technical nature of the fabric looks far better than it should.
I would not wear these to the office, but I wouldn’t balk at wearing them for almost anything else. And, I will say that they do not bag out like other fabrics of this nature — at least not before I need to wash them anyways. I have worn them for basically two weeks straight, and while they stretch out a tad, the knees and the waist doesn’t get so stretched out that they need to be washed so you can keep wearing them.
So fit: excellent. Style: about as good as one can hope with this type of material.
Overall
One of my all time favorite pair of pants is Outlier’s OG Climbers. I had to sell mine because I lost weight and they were too large — I have wanted another pair ever since. The problem with Climbers is that the style of that pant is stupid. The pockets are dumb. Also, they are discontinued.
Aether’s Kelso pant is a better version of Outlier’s Climbers. Just as comfortable, without all the stupid style choices. I absolutely love these pants, and highly recommend them.
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