Wait while you are redirected to my new location

I read this article in the NY Times the other day ...very interesting.

Who Pays $600 for Jeans?
By GUY TREBAY
Published: April 21, 2005

From left: Tsubi, $319; True Religion, $359; Blue Blood, $272; Chip & Pepper, $275.

COLLETTE LEONARD would probably be the first to tell you that the premium denim thing is a little out of hand. She is aware of how loopy it is to lose one's senses in the quest for a neatly packaged posterior. She knows there is something fundamentally silly in indulging an obsession with foraging obsessively for the best, newest, most underground pair of five-pocket cotton trousers, of hoping to unearth the holy grail, jeans made by a label never yet photographed on Jennifer Aniston

...

That is why Ms. Leonard was elated to uncover some import jeans sewn by a London label so obscure it is barely available on these shores.

The trousers, by All Saints, had slim straight legs and a stylized leather cross appliquéd just below the hip. Tea-stained lace trim adorned the hems and pockets. Without question there are people who would consider the price, a hefty $375, a deterrent. Ms. Leonard is not one of them.

"I don't balk at $500 for a pair of shoes," explained Ms. Leonard, who was shopping last month at Atrium, a boutique on Lower Broadway that is to premium denim what Barney Greengrass is to lox. "Why should I balk at that price for jeans that are special. "

...

Far from being rarities, jeans with price tags of $200 are now everywhere, the retail equivalent of dandelions after spring rain. And it no exaggeration to say that a pair these days can easily cost as much as an iPod (Tsubi, $319), a Motorola Razr (Levi's vintage, $325), or a desktop computer with the printer thrown in. (Nudie vegetable dye jeans, $428.)

As jeans have become an increasingly acceptable component of business and evening wear, a wardrobe staple suitable for any occasion (including board meetings, if one happens to be Steve Jobs), out of place nowhere except, possibly, funerals, the appetite for premium jeans has grown beyond a cowboy's wildest imaginings.

...

So it makes a perverse sense that a no-nonsense form of cotton work trousers should unexpectedly be transformed into an insider emblem of high style. Designed in 1873 by the Levi Strauss company as "hard-wearing work wear" for California miners, and available universally and cheaply for the next century, jeans in their latest "premium" incarnation are like the punch line to some elaborate Veblenesque joke.

...

Right now you could have a pair of jeans that cost $1,000, and people would buy them," Lawrence Scott, the owner of Pittsburgh Jeans Company, said last week. What, Mr. Scott was asked, is the indispensable element in the making of a perfect pair of luxury jeans?

"Same as always," he said. "It's going to come down to how your behind looks when you pour yourself into them. No matter how good the wash or the detail or the label, if it doesn't look good on a behind, it won't sell."

That got me to thinking, how much would I pay for a pair of jeans?

Now finding the right pair of jeans has always been a task I hate. Since I was a kid I remember shopping with my mom for back-to-school clothes; having to try on pair after pair of jeans at Sears and JcPenney because none would fit right.

Even now, I have to try on at least 10 different pairs before I find that one that sorta looks ok on me. That is the curse of having a small waist and a not-so-small bottom, oh, and being short too. I did finally find my dream pair of jeans at American Eagle. I was elated. The color was just right: not too faded, but not too dark, the fit was perfect: didn't make my rear look huge, and the length was just at my heel: no more dragging pants! At last I had found the holy grail of jeans! The jeans were discontinued a month later...

So at this point, I feel like I wouldn't mind paying a little more to have that perfect-fitting pair of jeans. Would I pay $600 for a pair though? No, not unless it came with a pair of shoes, a handbag, dinner and a movie. But that's just me.

CJ at 4/27/2005

Comments:

By CJ, at: 12:45 PM

cindylu-yeah, I'm with you. The most I could pay would be MAYBE $100 to $150, but they better look darn good, and be indestructible.