You know a Gurkha trouser by the two tabs across the front waistband, which do away with the belt and buckle entirely, and by the high waist that gives the leg a long clean line. The style came out of the uniforms worn by the Gurkha regiments of the British Indian Army, and somewhere along the way classic menswear adopted it and never gave it back. It has become one of the requests we get most often from customers who have owned plenty of ordinary trousers and now want something with a bit more to it.
The tabs, the rise and the back adjuster
The two fabric tabs at the front are the whole signature. Each one has its own buckle and each adjusts separately, which means the trouser can be pulled to fit your waist exactly whatever your waist-to-hip ratio happens to be. If you are one of those men who can never find a trouser that fits the waist and the seat at the same time, this is a style worth hearing about, and bespoke construction solves the underlying problem anyway.
The rise sits an inch or two above your natural waist. That does two things. It lengthens the leg to the eye, and it gives you a clean uninterrupted waist that a mid-rise trouser cannot manage. There are usually no belt loops, so it is worn with braces, and the combination is comfortable, secure and very good to look at.
Round the back there is normally a cinch or a small buckle at the centre seam, so the waistband can be fine-tuned. Useful, because most of us are a slightly different size standing up than sitting down after lunch.