Wednesday 30 May 2007

Wear Jeans!

Thought I tripped over today; here's what I think a jeans manufacturer should adopt as their next ad strategy:

WEAR JEANS
(it's the eco-friendly choice)

Why? Because it gets about 50 times more wear than anything else in your wardrobe, except maybe shoes. They are durable. You are happy to wear them when they fade and fray.

In style terms I have two pairs of jeans which i am happy to wear in rotation and have been doing so all of this year. Anything else in the wardrobe has much more limited use, you wouldnt wear any other trouser day in and day out across the year. It is a fashion staple, most other clothes accessorise to a much greater extent and are therefore less versatile.

Yes you would do this for a fair trade and organic line of jeans like Levi's Eco (note the little green tag in the pic above). I do know that growing cotton is not a green thing when it involves such heavy use of pesticides.

You would run a second hand exchange for those that like em scruffy which is to be encouraged. Jeans also record your shape, your life story (that scuff from when...) a nice antidote to anodyne fashion.

Seriously, I have seen the future and it is denim.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

lob in fairtrade cotton and you would be a veritable saint!

John Grant said...

hi jon

yes it has to be fair trade

(or second hand = no manufacturing)

remember the Levi's fair trade scandal in the 1990s when one of their suppliers was found to be using slave (ie unpaid) labour in Chinese prisons?!

not very saintly

but I reckon the cost per use of even a pricey and fair trade/eco pair of jeans is only pence

Freya said...

hello john, check out denimtherapy.com - send in your beloved jeans when you go through the knee/crotch etc (which always annoyingly happens at the exact moment they become most perfect) and they'll lovingly repair the fabric for you. Not bulky horrid patches but literally thread by thread remake them. Don't think it's that spendy either - definitely miles cheaper than buying a new pair. Not to mention they make repairing your old jeans cool, not embarassing like it was when your mum patched your clothes. Am sending in my fave marc jacobs pair to trial the service and the hubby's . The only eco-downside? They don't let you drop the jeans off, you have to fed-ex them. Oh, and they're in NYC which I am but you aren't. A big denim co should band together with them - prolong the life of your levis or whatever, no? And NB not a whiff of obvious green about them. V. cool.

John Grant said...

Synchronicity?


Cut-price jeans send denim sales soaring
Rebecca Smithers, consumer affairs correspondent
Friday June 1, 2007
The Guardian

Supermarket and high street retailers' cut-price own-label jeans have boosted the market for denim and will help value it at a huge £1.51bn by the end of the year, according to a report today.
Sales of jeans have soared by 40% in the last five years, the research by consumer analysts Mintel shows. This year three pairs of jeans are expected to be sold every second of every day in Britain alone and the industry is expected to break the £2bn barrier by 2012