How jeans conquered the world (2012)
bbc.com
bbc.com
Nearly all have reduced the number of belt loops to 5, so I always add 2 more in the back on either side.
I've started seeing really short zippers, which is unfixable and best to avoid.
I've noticed a lot of ill fitting jeans bunch around the crotch or suffer from being a "cheap hotel". Also unfixable.
Most are not lined inside around the waist and pockets.
Sometimes the pocket hole is cut too high, making it awkward to put your hand in the pocket. Or worse, theres not enough give on the pocket to fit your hand in.
Buttons and buttonholes don't always match well, especially on a button fly. I think it's easier to enlarge the holes, but sometimes the buttons can be oddly small.
And of course measurements are unreliable, but that's true of all clothes.
These are nitpicky things, but I notice them all the time at all price ranges. I expect they're decisions made out of carelessness, or to save costs, or because that was the intend result. Cynically, I believe carelessness is the most common cause.
I also typically buy about three pairs of shorts from them every so often, since I know they fit and that way I don't have to decide about which shorts to wear. They tend to run a bit small (or other pants run a little big), so I add 2" to the waist size when I order from them.
I just counted: 7 belt loops. Also a nice crotch gusset.
EDITed to add: I've been informed that these are "dad jeans" and in no way fashionable.
0: http://www.duluthtrading.com/store/mens/mens-pants/mens-deni...
Can't comment on the fashion, but I've gotten compliments about them before. That may just be because the heavy-cargo-pants form factor works well for my frame, however.
[1] http://www.duluthtrading.com/store/mens/mens-pants/work-pant...
By-the-by, they recommend not washing too often, as little as once per year... just don't mix them with your regular washing.
They had inseams 29" and up (maybe 28 but never saw them in store) and they were built to last. I still have some from 15 years ago and except for some color fading, still hang in tough. They also have different styles so you don't have to be stuck into 'dad' jeans!!!
I've noticed a lot of ill fitting jeans bunch around the crotch or suffer from being a "cheap hotel". Also unfixable.
seems an unfortunately worded critique given your username :)
I've been meaning to order from them for a while, and have heard really good things about them.
You might be better served looking at http://companiondenim.com/
you can spend a bit more ($~150) and get a pair of jeans that are way better than a pair of Levis at ~$60, but if all you want to spend is $60 you really won't find a better quality*. Uniqlo, however, comes very close.
[1] - There are some brands that do business via preorder that will provide better quality at a similar price (Gustin comes to mind). They are covering their risk up front though (which is very different than retail and even more different than custom) and even then those companies will often end up losing money on their cheaper pairs.
That said, there may also be some room to doubt this interpretation. I'm passingly familiar with the costs that go into producing quality jeans. The very short version is that while made-to-measure at high quality is absolutely possible, it cannot reliably be done at this price point. The labor and materials costs alone at low volumes will blow out the budget.
You're right! There are two ways of looking at such things. But as it happens, I'm someone who knows. When a market player diverges very significantly from every other player, it's very possible that they're simply outperforming everyone to a shocking degree... and it's also possible that they're dealing with the same tradeoffs as everyone else.
Any alteration at that site is not included, it's tacked on to the $79 USD base price.
That said, it's possible that your comment - and that of your sibling - picking on the price of Levi's may run the risk of missing my point. Which is not that Levi's are overpriced, but rather that it's not reasonable for the site in question to deliver on its promises at an acceptable quality at the volumes they claim to be doing.
American online retailers that have good, affordable shipping to New Zealand won't ship Levi's to NZ (or at least last time I checked, they didn't).
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/outlet-stores-arent-a-good-de...
I really wish I could have the old Levis 505s back. No, the new ones aren't the same. No, the 550s are not a good alternative. I just want "regular fit" jeans with a normal rise, not the low-rise jeans everyone else seems to want.
That's why they don't make them anymore, I suppose.
Buttons are where its at.
These denim stores are mostly focused on raw denim, which is generally a much higher quality garment than available normally.
An $80 pair of jeans, which will often be on sale for $40-$50 will last me for 2-3 years and are of average quality.
It seems to me like one would have to justify these jeans on the fashion/novelty aspect, and not quality/value as it just isn't there imho.
Since I wear denim almost everyday, the quality difference and the attention to detail matters to me. It reminds me that attention to detail matters in my own work
I don't understand why engineers tend to care so little about the quality of their clothes
Virtue signaling. It says you're focused on your intellectual pursuits rather than material things (in contrast to 'the suits'). This is actually great from a hiring manager's point of view, because you can also guess (guess, not know) from someone's appearance whether they are single and to what degree they take care of themselves, while will in turn give an idea of how much work you can pile onto them before they figure it out or change their personality.
For those who don't 'get' clothes (as a former sufferer): you may not be able to readily distinguish expensive clothes from cheap ones, or see the point of wearing them. But other people do, and if you look like money, you will be able to get more money in negotiations. If you look or say that you don't care about such things, you'll get lots of affirmation and less money, because affirmation is virtually free.
There's also a kind of signaling by people who are rich enough not to care about these things and dress accordingly, which is a way of reminding other people that you have so much money you don't care about what impression you make. This only works when people already know you're wealthy, though.
The downside of higher quality clothing (money) is obvious: it's the upside that needs explaining. Fashion is the prototypical example of signaling, and quality as held separate from fashion has a couple minor advantages like being long-lasting and marginally more comfortable that many people feel aren't worth the price.
I dress moderately well, but that's largely against my preferences. I do it because I'm aware that people treat you differently based on how you look and how you dress, and I've decided that the cost and annoyance of putting together a good wardrobe is worth the benefits. To be clear, I've got a pretty low opinion of those who judge others based on their attire, but I'm realistic (and cynical) enough to get that that's the world I live in.
I've worked with a lot of incredibly smart engineers at places like Google, and the people I know pretty much ran the gamut of caring about the quality of their clothing. The only difference is that they tended to have their work performance judged on productivity instead of fashion so, relative to others, their calculus for how to dress included one less variable in favor of dressing up.
I personally find psychological benefits to dressing nicely -- I feel much more industrious and "ready-to-work" when I wear a nice outfit to work compared to tshirt/jeans/sneakers, plus I get a nice "switch" effect when I get home and can take it all off. Similarly, I feel more prepared to exercise when I switch into my exercise clothes, even though those DO have "real" benefits thanks to their cut and material.
Beyond that, the signaling can be extensive. Not all signals are "quality" -- you can dress to show off your creativity or as a means of expression (I personally love to thrift/vintage shop and learn about fashion trends from other eras). You can dress to emphasize/de-emphasize various aspects of your face and body, presumably for sex appeal. And sure, you can dress to show that you've got money to spend.
But a lot of times, people dress to fit in. This can apparently get venomous in certain professions (finance, for one). In tech, there's often a dress code, as described in this comment[1], and "dressing like you don't understand why people care about nice clothing" is realistically pretty close to it.
What I was arguing against is the maximizing impulse on the _other_ end: the notion that it's so self-evidently universally valuable that the primary reason to not dress well would be Virtue signaling.
That comment you linked to is just flat bullshit. People who desperately try to justify strict old-fashioned dress codes somehow conflate "you can literally lose your job if you don't dress this way" with "I feel awkward being the only person dressed this way, even in the absence of anyone else's reaction". It's insane to me that so many people uncritically parrot this utter nonsense.
There is also big difference between formal rules you can be fired for not following and informal ones - informal are still limiting but people cross them once in a while and you often finds it is actually ok in the long term.
People like to generalize tech as if everything would be stereotypical frat like start up, but it is not the case.
Curious, were you wearing your higher quality clothing when you made this comment ?
For some, more expensive clothes increases their sense of superiority. I, for example, am less polite and less patient when I have to dress well. It isn't so much of a problem now that I am aware of it.
I don't think describing a common thought pattern has much to do with an increased sense of superiority. Have you never spoken about a behavior or activity that you think is bad? Were you exhibiting a superiority complex each time? Give me a break.
I don't feel the psychological effects of dressing well particularly strongly, but I acknowledge that others do and I don't think there's anything wrong with those feelings.
That's a very different position from being small minded enough to universalize one's own attitudes towards attire to "explain" the behavior of those who may not feel the same way as you. _That's_ what I was arguing against, the idea that virtue signalling must be the reason for putting less money and time into attire because people couldn't _possibly_ have different preferences.
Fussell notes this in his Class. The group he categorizes as "top out-of-sight" (mostly old money) is genuinely beyond caring about appearances and are where you get a lot of "eccentric" rich-person behavior like wearing really cheap clothes. Upper-class folks, especially younger ones, may very carefully and deliberately dress way down, especially when traveling (for some reason), though they will not, and will not intend to, actually blend in.
Separately but somewhat relatedly, he claims that higher classes will tend to buy unexceptional things where spending more is seen as primarily a status signaling thing, and especially when the thing is in any way technological—so buying a flashy, expensive, new car belongs to the sensibilities of the upper-middle classes and lower (regardless of their income—talking about socialized class, not income) while the comfortably rich might just own a beat-up Chevy, or an old luxury car.
Where you do not see people do it is when there's a risk they might actually be mistaken for belonging to any part of Fussell's "prole" category—so, upper-middle and, especially, middle.
Also, although the parts you selected are pretty reasonable and provide insight in this discussion, I would advise taking Fussell's book with some caution: it is an entertaining read but it is not definitive or really all that well-supported beyond his personal observations, and it slices a particular time and culture that seems to be on the wane (as the American middle class disappears, and the nature of the working class changes).
His "Class X" stuff was way off, of course, and is another thing the trappings of which became just another class marker (for hipsters, in fact, and some other fashion/lifestyle movements). Probably that's a recurring cycle with countercultures. Some specifics have shifted, though trends and anxieties have not so much, I think. A lot of the visible wealth now is (as usual) new money—often tech folks—so I think it remains to be seen whether their kids and grandkids will retain "lower" (largely upper-middle) class tastes and behaviors or integrate fully into the upper classes.
I could elaborate on some of the racial dimensions of the "hipster", though, if you'd like. It's not a topic I know much about, so yes, I'd definitely love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
The crux seems to be:
> [The] hipster—and the reference here is to Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro” essay for Dissent in 1957—was explicitly defined by the desire of a white avant-garde to disaffiliate itself from whiteness, with its stain of Eisenhower, the bomb, and the corporation, and achieve the “cool” knowledge and exoticized energy, lust, and violence of black Americans...
> The hipster, in both black and white incarnations, in his essence had been about superior knowledge—what Broyard called “a priorism.” He insisted that hipsterism was developed from a sense that minorities in America were subject to decisions made about their lives by conspiracies of power they could never possibly know. The hip reaction was to insist, purely symbolically, on forms of knowledge that they possessed before anyone else, indeed before the creation of positive knowledge—a priori. Broyard focused on the password language of hip slang.
> The return of the term after 1999 reframed the knowledge question. Hipster, in its revival, referred to an air of knowing about exclusive things before anyone else...
The rest of the article is sort-of a history of various trends in "hipsterism" over the period from 1999 to 2009. But this is quite a digression from the dominance of jeans...
but ... it is supposed to be meritocracy :)
Binoculars is a good example. You've probably only ever looked through a $50 pair of binos, and thought that looks good enough. But compare it to a $500 set, and the difference will seem like night and day.
What is exciting about raw denim is that it develops highly personal wear patterns that reflect your life over a long period of time. Picture a beat-up pickup truck, or a pair of boots. You've had it for years, taken it everywhere, it's full of stories. That's the idea.
In other words, the fashion aspect does matter to people, oftentimes more than any practical aspect. (I think sometimes people take it to a silly degree...)
1: http://www.barneys.com/product/vetements-zip-around-straight...
Even the founder/designer jokes that he wouldn't pay full price for his own designs.
http://www.complex.com/style/2016/05/vetements-designer-demn...
> My friends very often can’t afford the clothes. Like myself, I wear prototypes but I don’t think I’m crazy fashion enough to go and buy those things. I’d rather go on holiday. I feel like it brings more use. Holidays are important. Holidays and quality time on your sofa.
> Even the founder/designer jokes that he wouldn't pay full price for his own designs.
I really don't blame him. A lot of it seems like jokey conceptual art stuff. Cute to look at/think about but I probably wouldn't wear.
Another particular reason people love raw denim is the high contrast fades that match your body because you faded them.
Here's a picture someone posted to reddit.com/r/rawdenim a little while ago, 1 year heavy wear with an $120 pair of Unbranded:
And here is a picture of what UB221 jeans look like brand new.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0810/7201/products/Taper_-...
I know some people will wear jeans two/three times before washing them, but changing clothes daily is still expected in the office environment. So you will need at least 5 different pairs to cycle through each week. At the end of the year each pair is worn ~60 times, and washed about < 20 times.
I personally buy cheap $30 jeans, have ~10 in active rotation, only wear them on workdays and wash them all once a month. They last for years. I throw them away not because they are worn out, but because my preference changes. So for me all this talk about quality of the more expensive jeans doesn't ring true.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rawdenim/comments/6ci52s/ub221_dail...
A comment written by the OP of that post:
> 2-3 washes I think? And. 2 soaks in a hot bath tub. But also multiple, uncountable amounts of getting caught in the pouring rain riding a motorcycle. I remember riding during hurricane Hermine wearing them
With raw denim (and especially on the subreddit and other internet forums) not washing it is almost a badge of honor. Months or longer in some cases. Because you're right, you don't need to wash them very often, and also washing them causes them to fade overall, so you lose some contrast.
> I personally buy cheap $30 jeans, have ~10 in active rotation
Ah, but that's the difference, this is often someone's only pair of jeans. So you're comparing $300 of jeans to a $122 pair of jeans. I rotate between a few pairs because I need the variety, but some people may end up wearing a single pair of jeans over 300 times in a year and washing it once or twice.
You can buy SF / NC made denim for around $100. I think that fair for a higher quality product made with fairly paid labor [http://www.tellason.com/tellason-stock-straight-leg-fit/]
If you want denim of the same quality of Japanese selvage, made in the US, then it is back to the $200+ range [http://www.tellason.com/ankara-straight-leg-selvedge-jeans-1...]
https://hiutdenim.co.uk/collections/mens
Reasonably priced. Exceptional quality. And you get to support a community of jeans makers in Wales.
Also — free repairs for life. I've sent a couple of pairs back a few times because I wear the hell out of my jeans, and they return with repairs almost more beautiful than the original fabric.
Truly one of those rare companies that does one thing extremely well.
These are jeans you only have one pair of, that you wear EVERY DAY. They are worth it but it's like buying a nice sports car or nice purse. It's the same thing. Invest in what you use all the time.
Most pants (in the American sense, not British) should last you at least a couple of days. I'm not going to wash a nice pair of woolen trousers every day.
Why, what happened to cotton lycra, herringbone, linen, traditional business suit trousers etc?
In reality, no work place or social event has no dress code. We've just made it even harder by not having names for any of it.
When I worked in a very traditional industry the dress code was always clear - semi-formal, informal, planter's, etc all had clear specific meanings and you could not make a mistake. When I go to a Google office, or a fashionable wedding they say 'wear whatever you are comfortable in' but if I wore a suit to Google or jeans to the wedding I'd be doing it wrong, so it's not honest.
Yet ... still when I need to find a pair of trousers, it can take me half a day of shopping.
Online shopping is no good either, because I can't just write "low waist boot cut jeans, size 32/34" in any search engine. Even Amazon can't grok it.
Seriously, somebody should fill that market gap.
This is surprising to me. Most contemporary Levi's I've tried seem quite low-waisted, so I'm forced to buy vintage for a more traditional high-waisted fit.
Normally you have to trade off how often you have to replace them with how much they cost. For me, Levis red tabs (when found at Costco) are still pretty much right at the price point where the frequency of replacement works out the best value for money.
Of course, like everything, it depends on what you're using them for - for city life, your $200 fashion jeans will last much longer than they do on the farm where they're done in 10 minutes. With the amount of time they last, the idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a pair of jeans that will be destroyed quickly just makes me cringe.
My other alternative are my Outlier pants https://outlier.nyc/
> Last year a microbiology student at the University of Alberta, Josh Le, wore the same pair of raw denim jeans for 15 months without washing them and then tested their bacterial content. He tested them again two weeks after washing them and found the bacterial content to be much the same.
> "This shows that, in this case at least, the bacteria growth is no higher if the jeans aren't washed regularly," said Rachel McQueen, a professor of textile science, who worked with Le on the informal scientific experiment.
The research they reference: https://www.ualberta.ca/news-and-events/newsarticles/2011/01...
> Do you never sweat? Are the jeans antimicrobial or something?
apparently cares.
I also am in the smell + "does it look bad" camp in terms of "will I wear it."
How they're stored probably affects it some. I have better results hanging them up rather than letting them sit on the floor, even if I'm just going to put them back on the next morning.
Every time I wear jeans, I'd feel itching very soon, particularly when it's hot, or when I wear the same pants two days in a row.
I'm not sure if either I didn't notice this before, or did I change, or the production process of the jeanswear has changed.
That is, it's just really boring. Colour is one of the few things we've got to express ourselves, so it's a shame we don't use it more.
Oh people find all other sorts of mildly yawnworthy ways "to express themselves", from oddly-placed piercings to full-face tattoos to half-baldshaved-half-manbun hairdos to oh-so-snowflake band t-shirts to rainbow-colored socks... among all the noise and clutter, "more colorful pants" wouldn't particularly stand out to me as expressive, whereas by now an unadulterated unmutilated well-nourished clear-eyed non-screen-zombified come-as-you-are face, nowadays, would. In fact, the blander and minimal the clothes and peripherals, the more one's face and head will stand out on its own! That's today's ultimate self-expression, allowing your natural self to shine through in full glory absent all the countless "customization options" people go through to carve out their "unique" avatars =)
Color? I can save that for my hair, which tends to have blue or green shades. I can save it for a bit of makeup when I wear it. I can save it for paintings and artwork and making nice-looking food.
A few years ago there were even lots of very loud turquoise, red and yellow ones around for a time, and honestly I think we're all a little glad that's ended :)
That's basically what I was moaning about. It's just BW monochrome + blue monochrome.
Bring on the turquoise and fuchsia I say!
But jeans for comfort? Maybe I'm the only one, but I find pants infinitely more comfortable. Even wool dress pants.
And in the summer, jeans barely breath at all.
I was especially annoyed a few years ago to find my favorite brand had slightly shortened the zipper, thus eliminating the whole benefit of being able to pee standing up because it was difficult to get my hand inside the smaller opening and uncomfortable to have it pinching me while I use the toilet. I'm sure the small savings on shorter zippers add up in the corporate accounts, but why would you make it more difficult for half the population to do something they need to do multiple times a day? They do the same sort of things with women's jeans by making the pockets too small to fit anything into (not to mention all the problems of getting a good fit since women's body shapes seem to vary more than men's).
Economically jeans are an interesting example of commodity fetishism systematically making the product worse, as the emphasis shifts to fashionable display over comfort and functionality, and eventually the latter begins to be sacrificed in pursuit of the former. The oddest example I've seen of this was a UK startup that proposed to give people free jeans for 6 months or a year so that they'd wear them in and then ship them back for sale at a high price to fashionistas who wanted an authentically distressed look rather than one inflicted with a power tool at the jean factory. In other words, people will pay money to look poorer than they actually are.
Button fly is the only way to fly. Started as a skeptic, now a total convert.
And, personally, as one who wears 501s at every opportunity, I wouldn't be caught dead in those things outside my house. But that's just personal taste.