Our Alice women's cargo work pants have been a favourite since Co Gear began as “She’s Empowered”. Their journey started when Kym O’Leary (founder), was working at a Central Queensland mine, and often heard about the struggles working women were having when trying to find safety compliant pants to wear on site. On the bus commute to the mine, Kym would hear women complaining that their work pants were too snug at the hips, having to order larger sizes, which then made the pants too loose at the crotch and leg. It was a constant battle.
One night when having dinner out at camp, Kym saw a woman with some flattering cargos on she hadn’t seen before. She approached the woman, only to find out that they were a DIY project and made uniquely for her. This woman was too petite for the supplied uniform, and a belt simply scrunched up the excess material at her waist, making them hot and uncomfortable. She had bought a pair of cargos that she loved in a mainstream clothing store and sewed on the reflective tape at her own expense, in her own time, creating a solution to her problem.
This sparked an idea for Kym and more instances of women being unhappy in their hi vis safety pants were cropping up every day, motivating her to do something about it! At the time, she had only recently launched She’s Empowered with a maternity shirt, but now decided the brand had to be bigger than that. It had to empower women right across the mining, resources, construction and transport sectors that were faced with the same challenge. And that’s how Alice was born!
Through feedback from real women, with real bodies, and real dreams of comfortable hi vis work cargos, Kym hit the drawing board and designed Alice to properly fit women’s hips, thighs and bums, and help women feel comfortable and confident on site. Women everywhere found these cargos to be a success and they grew quite the following.
A few years later, She’s Empowered was rebranded to Co Gear, and the designs were in need of a facelift to continue supporting what women in industry needed.
After receiving feedback on site on how we could improve Alice, it inspired the Co Gear team to create a prototype of cargo pants that catered to a broad range of women by making them more customisable. We tweaked the design to include a pocket upgrade, easy fit waistband and segmented tape to compliment the 285gsm stretch cotton fabric. The new and transformed Alison became an even more inclusive work pant, created to make all women feel like they belong at work. Four working women tested and trialed the Alison work cargo pants on site in WA and QLD, giving them the thumbs up of approval! Since then we have been blown away by the positive feedback about Alison, and she remains to be one of the most popular Co Gear products.
Psst, our Alison women's work cargo pants are currently available for pre-order! Just click here to secure yourself a pair.