Run & Fly has been my exclusive brand of pants for about 7 years now. When I first bought these black slacks they were fantastic, lush soft fabric and almost no fade after several years of lots of use, easy to wash & maintain, too.
A couple years ago I ordered more black slacks, and they were totally different. A rough canvas like feel and very stiff & scratchy, also they were not even that black, more like a super dark grey and faded rapidly. Hard to maintain as well because they would get wrinkles in the washing & drying process and hold those wrinkles so they would have to be flattened with force or even ironed every single time just to look normal, not at all referring to the vertical crease one actually wants to have in these types of pants, and the bottom hems really wanted to roll and curl upwards as well.
I contacted the company about this and they said the switch in construction was because they were easier to maintain, which I then told them was flat out not true.
So a few weeks ago I decided to order more to see if they had improved the quality of these particular pants. When I received my order, it had one pair of the bad, cheap-feeling style that I just mentioned, and two pairs of a new third style I've never had before. It is much more satisfactory. Very black and very soft. Assuming they don't fade quickly or anything, I would be happy to keep buying these pants if they stick to this style.
However, these most recent 2 iterations of these pants both have a tag that says "98% cotton, 2% lycra" which I find surprising because they're so vastly different from each other. The original versions I bought were "65% polyester 35% viscose" so I'm all for the switch to a majority of cotton as long as these hold up.
But after experiencing such drastic changes in construction quality without any information or notifications provided by the company, and getting a different variety of what is supposed to be the same product in a single order (after having a direct email conversation about how I didn't like that one version), I'm becoming leary about ordering from this company now.
Unlike some of their other products, these pants, and a few others that I like to order, are actually outsourced (ethically) to India for manufacturing. Perhaps if they were actually manufactured in UK they would be more capable of consistency and quality control, but I don't know.
There are other styles of pants over all these years I'd have liked to try but they are always out of stock whenever I'm looking, so I'm starting to get irritated; even this last order I wasn't able to buy as many as I wanted. And after my latest experiences, my experiences with their striped and pinstriped pants fading so rapidly, and their corduroy
pants having weak seams by the zipper that always bust, I'm not sure it's worth trying anymore. (Those last things are not affecting my review here because I haven't brought them up to the company before.)
If circumstances were different these could be 5 stars but you don't know what you're going to get anymore. I'm giving 3 stars. Could've been 2 but sometimes what you do get is actually excellent, so I'm settling on 3 stars for now.
If you've read this, thank you for your time and attention, and I hope you can stay consistent in improving quality and maintaining stock because there aren't many companies making ethically sourced men's bell-bottoms these days.
