UTILITY IS FASHION TO MALES:

Mr. Hansen's wife, Ashleigh Hansen, said she sneaks her husband's cargo shorts off to Goodwill when he's not around. Mrs. Hansen, 30, no longer throws them out at home because her husband has found them in the trash and fished them out.

"I despise them," she said. "There were so many good things about the '90s. Cargo shorts were not one of them."

Fashion historians believe cargo pants were introduced around the 1940s for military use. In the U.S. Air Force, narrow cockpits meant pilots needed pockets in the front of their uniforms to access supplies during flight. British soldiers climbing or hiding in high places found pockets on cargo pants more effective than utility belts for storing ammunition.

They exploded into mass fashion in the mid-to-late 1990s, coinciding with the popularity of teen retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch, which became famous for filling its catalogs with shirtless men wearing only cargo shorts. The pockets filled a utilitarian need as cellphones became ubiquitous.

"Those teenagers are now married, and they don't get rid of their clothes. They don't evolve," said Joseph Hancock, a design and merchandising professor at Drexel University, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis about cargo pants.

Around 2010, slimmer men's shorts started to replace baggy silhouettes. By then, the backlash against cargo shorts was well under way.

Fashion guru Tim Gunn said in a 2007 interview with Reuters that cargo shorts were the least fashionable item of clothing in his closet. British tabloid Daily Express called cargo shorts "a humiliation for any man over 21 and should be sold only after proof of age has been presented."

Many upscale golf courses have banned cargo shorts in recent years. In 2012, Michael Jordan was playing golf in cargo shorts at a Miami country club when he was asked to change his pants, according to news reports at the time. He reportedly refused. His agent released a statement afterward saying Mr. Jordan had previously worn cargo pants at the club without incident.

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