What’s your opinion of a pair of jeans costing more than $200?
For many men the very idea of spending this amount seems ludicrous.
I know – it seemed crazy to me for a long time.
I mean – why would you pay that much money for something you’re going to wear through in a year? Not to mention jeans can be bought at any department store for $40.
When the question is framed like that – it is impossible to justify. However – this way of framing the question – that all jeans are disposable work-wear – isn’t right for a large number of well-dressed men. Why?
Because jeans have become a wardrobe staple. Jeans are a modern menswear classic – America’s contribution to style no longer constrained as outdoor labor wear.
Quality denim is (and has for over 40 years) worn with blazers, sport jackets, dress boots, and dress shirts. When worn in this company – using better materials and focusing on higher quality build is going to raise the cost to well over $200+, and if individually custom made by hand – you’re looking at $500+.
In this article we’ll discus 5 factors that explain why high-end denim is a smart choice for many sharp-dressed men.
1. Quality Denim Can Last for Decades
Most people’s standard for how long clothes should last is warped by the low standards of mass manufactured clothing.
Your grandfather would be very surprised at the idea of a pair of jeans that lasts maybe two or three years. The fact is clothing build and materials have raced to the bottom – the result is a disposable wardrobe made up of clothing not capable of lasting long enough to wear holes in it.
Think about it – your grandparents patched their few articles of quality built clothing because it usually only gave out in a single spot or was the victim of an unlucky tear. Today we have closets full of cheap clothing that we donate when it starts to show wear (usually after a few dozen washes).
A pair of jeans that’s worth multiple hundreds of dollars should be upfront about its materials. If the denim itself isn’t a big part of the company’s focus you’re probably paying for a label (no actual worth beyond its own marketing) rather than for the material (real, tangible worth).
Raw denim is typical among most artisan manufacturers. “Raw” simply means that the denim hasn’t been washed or treated since the threads were dyed. They’re woven into cloth and the cloth is cut and stitched into jeans without any water or chemical bath.
Good raw denim is 100% cotton. The texture can vary widely depending on the thickness of the thread, the tightness of the weave, and even how the yarns are twisted (some manufacturers created deliberate knots or imperfections in the yarn to create a textured surface; the bumpiness of denim made this way is referred to as the “slubbiness”).
Most artisan manufacturers will also use selvedge denim, which refers to how the edges of the cloth are finished. Selvedge doesn’t have to be raw denim and raw denim doesn’t have to be selvedge, but the combination of both usually makes the sturdiest denim that resists unraveling the longest.
The durability of well-made pants sewn from good denim can actually take some getting used to. Like a good pair of leather shoes, they need “breaking in.” And like a good pair of leather shoes, a properly cared-for pair of quality non-work wear jeans should can easily last a decade.
2. Upgrading The Details
The thread used to stitch your jeans or the studs at the corners of the seams seem like awfully insignificant details.
But an interesting effect of mass-production is that our eyes tend to notice anything that deviates from industry standard. So a small change – lilac stitching instead of the typical yellow/orange thread, say – leaps out. People may not notice it consciously, but part of their brain recognizes that you’re standing out from the crowd.
Artisan manufacturers like Brown, Diem (whose owner – Christopher – generously consulted with me on this article) avoid the cheapest and most common materials for the detailing. Used bullet casings (50 cal and 9mm) for studs, leather reinforcing for belt loops and the back patch (where the seams join just below the small of your back), patterned pocket lining, and dozens of other small touches like the use of stingray and Japanese silks make your pair of pants into a work of art.
The bringing-together of small details in a pair of artisan jeans reflects what a good dresser tries to do with his whole outfit. It’s not about one thing that stands out; it’s about how the whole comes together in a way that makes people say “wow, that looks good.”
If you wear your jeans to work in your vegetable garden and not much else, that artistry might not justify a $200+ price tag. But if you wear your jeans as part of your stylish wardrobe you can get your money’s worth out of the right artisan denim.
3. The Right Fit – Worth a Higher Price?
Most small luxury denim manufactures cut their patterns to target a particular niche of body builds – they realize by going after a smaller market of men they’ll make those who do fit into their jeans happier than trying to get every man into more generous cut sizing. By doing this they can also go after different age demographic – Zegna makes jeans targeting older men with a high rise and less material in the buttocks. A great combination unless you’re a 65 year old power-lifter who loves his squats.
Custom fitted jeans are a whole other animal – any manufacturer that asks for your measurements rather than using the standard waist/inseam combination is a sure bet for a product that’s worth a jump in price.
Most custom jeans will be made-to-measure rather than bespoke – there’s a set pattern that they use for all their clothes, which they will adapt to your individual measurements for a better fit in the seat, crotch, and waist.
That doesn’t mean you can’t find bespoke jeans, mind you. They are out there. But unless they’re advertised specifically as such and you have multiple conversations with the tailor over the course of having them made, you’re probably getting made-to-measure.
It’s hard to over-emphasize how much of a difference that well fitted denim makes in a world of sagging jeans. Mass-produced clothing is always cut as loose as possible for its listed size. Manufacturers want the product to fit on as many bodies as possible. What they look like once they’re on the body is a secondary concern at best – the assumption is that most people will accept anything that doesn’t pinch or fall right off as a “fit.” The result are jeans with loose cloth in the crotch that makes your butt and thighs look big.
Custom fitting brings that cloth in close without pinching, so that you get that molded-on slimness without the effort and discomfort of stuffing yourself into too-small jeans. You won’t feel like you’re being pinched, you’ll just look sleek and trimmed.
The extra work of tailoring each garment to a specific set of measurements slows down production speed quite a bit. It means the manufacturer can turn out far less garments per year than a mass-production line can. The cost is higher to make the whole process sustainable.
4. Handmade is the Ultimate Quality Control
A pair of mass-manufactured jeans has (you hope) gone through a process called quality control. In some cases it involves pulling the jeans on a pair of mannequin legs to check the fit as well as the seams and stitching. In other cases it might be limited to a worker looking up and down the external seams and passing it on for folding and packaging. Short of working in the factories you’re probably never going to get a good sense for what a particular company’s QC methods are. The only real test is buying and wearing the product itself, at which point it’s too late to really matter.
Handmade denim jeans are a different beast. When you have one person hand-making the jeans from start to finish, he knows what’s gone into them. The seams are being inspected the whole time. If they’re crooked or loose, the man making the jeans is immediately aware of it – it affects his next step, and has to be redone to make the whole product fit right. You can’t cut QC corners in a piece you’re staring at and working on with your own hands for hours.
Now, it doesn’t take that much to legally qualify for a “handmade” label. As long as you have human workers guiding the sewing machine instead of an automated system, assembly-line clothing can still be “handmade.”
That means you want to search out companies that have based their business model on “artisan” production.
A pair of jeans made from raw cloth to finished product by one person is a different garment from one made by a dozen people. There are many skilled craftsmen online, including some men and women who specialize entirely in denim, and those are the companies that are most likely to be producing jeans worth the price.
5. The Cost Per Wear Equation
That final reason might be the best one of all for a $200+ pair of jeans – it’s actually cheaper to own quality garments that last than cheap ones that have to be replaced.
If you wear it once a week for five years (with a couple weeks off just to make the math easy) you’ve paid less than $1 per wear. A $50 pair of jeans that lasts one year cost you twice that – and most likely it never looked as good on you. So even before you take into account the advantages of fit and style, you’re saving money on quality manufacture alone.
For a podcast interview on jeans for men over 30 – click here
For a solid overview of jeans – visit my art of manliness article here
For more information on quality custom made denim – I invite you to visit my friend Christopher over at Brown, Deim Custom Denim Jeans