FashBlog.com

By Christina VanGinkel

I was watching television the other night, waiting for my husband and son to get home from football practice, when a commercial came on. It showed the wearer skipping and jumping over a curb, in a pair of jeans that had obviously seen better days. Wait, the commercial was for the jeans! Ripped, faded, holes completely down the front of the pants, they looked as if they had been new possibly when the Beatles were making their US debut.

Jump to me in the mall with my twenty-one year old daughter. She asked me to go to town with her, as she needed some new jeans. Upon arriving at the store, she immediately heads for a rack of jeans that look as if they belong in the work wear section of St. Vincent DePaul. You know which section I mean, where jeans that have been donated are technically still jeans, but only barely, because they have a waistband and a zipper that works. The fabric that is the jeans themselves though, is often worn away, ripped, full of holes, even stains. Not good enough to hang on the racks with the regular donated clothes, they are piled in a bin, marked fifty cents, and sold to people who need to wear a pair of jeans to a job where they are going to only ruin them, so why wear a good pair there.

Suddenly, everywhere I look, people are wearing jeans that I had at first glance thought were pairs they had owned for a while. Favorite pairs that they had refused to give up over the years because they were so comfortable. Now I realize that most of these are brand new pairs of jeans. Purchased new, but looking old and worn. People are not only buying and wearing these fabrications, they are paying good money for them. The jeans that my daughter looked at had price tags ranging from $20 to $70. She told me that it is usual to see price tags upwards of $200 for a pair of these jeans. Manufacturers vary, so it is not even one niche market that is raking in the dollars, but a wide majority of the producers of jeans.

If I had known that this style would be such a huge draw, I could have been saving all my jeans through the years in readiness for a day such as this. I have tossed jeans missing pockets, holes through the knees, worn fronts so thin that the fabric even held together was a miracle in itself. If you want to try a pair of these jeans on, to see if they are as comfortable as everybody says they are, head to your local mall and look for the racks of jeans that appear to have been misplaced from any second hand shop's work wear section. Brands to consider include Abercrombie, Lee, Wrangler, Bigstar, Levi Strauss and many more. From just a slightly worn, faded look, to a near shredding, you are sure to find a pair of jeans that are as comfortable as your old bathrobe you have held onto for the last few decades!