Foreign Trade Red Shorts Review: We Measured the $4.93 Drawstring Summer Short

By Tobias Lang, Reviews Editor

What we ordered

The listing is Foreign Trade red shorts in everyday casual style, SKU 7717539167, priced at $4.93 USD against a $5.82 reference price and marked in stock. The catalog describes a mid-rise, straight-leg short in a thin polyester and spandex blend, closed with a drawstring instead of a belt, in sizes M to 4XL. The colour menu names six options: red, fluorescent green, beige grey, light purple, black and white. We ordered the red pair in size M through the Kakobuy agent and had the parcel delivered to the Rotterdam desk.

How our testing team checked it

Every featured product on this desk is bought, opened and worn by us. The parcel was photographed untouched, weighed on the 30 kg postal scale before the tape was cut, then the garment went onto the bench. Calipers went to the waistband, the leg opening, the seam allowance and the drawstring cord. The delivered red was held against the warehouse QC images under a 5000K lamp with a colour card alongside. The shorts then went into a seven-day wear rotation that included two days above 28 °C and one machine wash at 30 °C.

Measurements from the size M sample

Material, stitching and the stretch contradiction

The spec sheet lists polyester as the main fibre and spandex cloth as the fabric, calls it thin and breathable, and puts it in the brand's everyday pants category. Blend percentages are not published anywhere on the listing, and we cannot confirm them from the garment.

The listing also contradicts itself on elasticity: the material-function field says high stretch, the elasticity field says slight stretch. Our sample shows both entries are describing different parts of the same short. The waistband stretches hard — roughly 37 cm to 51 cm, about 38 percent — while the body panel gives only a little, somewhere near 15 percent over 10 cm of fabric. If you were expecting a stretchy four-way short below the waist, that is not what arrived.

Construction is basic but tidy at this price. Side seams are overlocked with roughly 1.0 cm of allowance, the hem is single-folded with one visible stitch row, and the flat woven drawstring exits two bound openings at the front. We found no loose thread tails and no skipped stitches on the load-bearing seams.

Fit and seven days of wear

The listing describes the cut both as shorts and as a long-tube style, which left the inseam genuinely unclear from the page alone. Measured, our size M sample sits at 17.5 cm, which lands mid-thigh on our 178 cm tester — a true warm-weather short rather than a knee-length cut. The 27.5 cm front rise puts the waistband at the natural mid-rise point, not at the navel.

Worn for a week, the thin polyester blend stayed comfortable on the hot days and dried quickly after the 30 °C wash, with no visible fading in the red. The honest limitation is the waist. With no belt loops and only a cord, the short sags at the back once both side pockets are loaded — a phone with the case on sits with its top edge above the pocket mouth, which is worth knowing before you plan to carry anything heavy. The pockets themselves are plain, unlined side-seam bags.

Colour and QC photo comparison

Under the 5000K lamp the delivered red sat close to the warehouse QC images — within one step on the colour card — with the garment reading fractionally deeper than the photos. We logged that as a lighting difference rather than a different batch. One caveat: we only ordered the red pair, so nothing here should be read as a statement about the fluorescent green, beige grey, light purple, black or white versions.

Price and what the parcel really costs

At $4.93 the item price is not where the money goes. A 0.31 kg parcel is cheap to ship, but the agent fee, domestic leg and international line will each be a multiple of the shorts themselves, so this only makes sense bundled with other items in the same submission. Measure the value against the total landed cost, not the catalog figure.

What we still could not confirm

• Fibre percentages: the listing names polyester and spandex but publishes no ratio.
• Seller-side measurements: none are published for any size, so our size M figures are the only reference in this review.
• Batch consistency: this is an unbranded source-factory listing, so fabric, colour and trim can change between production runs without notice.

Neither of the two spec-sheet conflicts on this listing is a deal-breaker, but both were only resolvable by opening a parcel — the page itself will not tell you how long the leg is or where the stretch sits.

Verdict

A cheap, light, drawstring summer short that measures out as exactly what the title claims: mid-rise, mid-thigh, plain and breathable. Buy it for the warm-weather basics slot, not for structure. Confirm the current batch and colour with the seller before ordering, since the listing still publishes no measurements of its own.