8 ms·

How the Jeans Capital of the World Moved from Texas to China

55 points by okfine 10y ago

zer00eyz 10y ago
As someone who has the skills (cutting, sewing, buttons, rivets) to make a pair of jeans there is a really simple reason that we (the USA) don't make jeans any more: cost. Lets take a look at one guy making jeans in the US: http://www.roydenim.com/video http://www.roydenim.com/video (video is a great place to start, you get a sense of what the work looks like). But for $225 a pair, its an indulgence.
- unethical_ban 10y ago
  You should have the skills to operate the machine that makes 5,000 pairs a day. Why can't mass manufacturing in America be a thing?
  - thrownaway2424 10y ago
    Mass manufacturing is a thing in America. America makes more stuff than any other country except, quite recently, China.
    - chris_va 10y ago
      Also let's not forget regulation (even good regulation) is expensive to follow.
  - evanpw 10y ago
    US industrial output is way up over the past few decades; it's just industrial employment that's way down.
  - michaelt 10y ago
    operate the machine that makes 5,000 pairs a day Robotics engineer here. It turns out it's ridiculously difficult to make machines that will reliably deal with small, flexible, sometimes-overlapping, sometimes-folded, identically coloured bits of fabric. You can automate parts of the garment-making process - embroidery, cutting things from rolls, stuff like that - but sewing the bits together automatically is really difficult for a machine, compared to a human. If you've got clever solutions for this feel free to advance the technology - I'd really like a robot that can do my laundry :)
    - lazaroclapp 10y ago
      This is probably fairly naive, but does having non-identically couloured bits of fabric help? Maybe by using temporary dyes that can be washed out at the end of the fabrication process (or evaporate before that)?
    - RGamma 10y ago
      It's somehow hard to believe that clever engineers couldn't come up with something, although I don't have anything to offer in this regard. Maybe one would need to think about entirely different sewing patterns (that must look the part) and cloth stretching/folding mechanisms for this problem. It's easy to see why you (with current technology) can't simply "make a robot that does what the human does" here.
      - Kalium 10y ago
        http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21651925-robotic-sewing-machine-could-throw-garment-workers-low-cost-countries-out http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21651925-... So, the technology exists, more or less. Like all new technology, it takes time to roll out.
      - zer00eyz 10y ago
        You have a totally valid line of thinking going on. Take something like the humble T-shirt. The process of making those is way more "automated" than it was even 30 years ago. The reason for this is that the t-shirt hasn't changed THAT much in 30 years, and is now more popular than ever. Due to the material, and the pattern, there is a lot of it that is the exact same step between product variations (size, cut etc) or can be done on the same machine the same way. However, something as simple as pants, not only change seasonaly (shorts) but they change annualy. It is easier for a car manufacturer to build an automated assembly line for welding a frame, than it is for a manufacturer of clothing to do the same for "this seasons" hot item. For the sake of argument, if we all agreed to wear bellbottoms for the rest of time as our only pants, and to only make them out of one kind of denim, it would STILL be hard for all the reasons mentioned above, but we would have reason to automate (scale). Even then, your producing the pants in 60 some odd waist/lenght combos for men, never mind women, children, teens.
  - zer00eyz 10y ago
    It can be: american giant is an example. Having recently gotten one of their hoodies, I can say that the quality is excellent vs what you might buy at target/gap/local retail. But it isn't the stitching or the fabric that is the reason for me disposing of a hoodie (as an example) its going to be staining, or unavoidable damage (snagged my clothing on something).
  - proyb 10y ago
    If needle break or misalignment in sewing, it become a defective. Same as there are defective PCB in the manufacturing.
- airplane 10y ago
  I am guessing you made jeans before, if so can you share and estimate the cost of materials and time it takes for one pair of jeans? Am curious because $225 for time and materials seems like too much to me. Perhaps these guys in the video run too small of an operation to have the costs spread around and to invest in tech to speed up the process.
  - zer00eyz 10y ago
    Not jeans, but rather very expensive dresses, and at a very small scale. 1500$ dress, has probably $150-200 in material (bought at/near wholesale prices), I'm sure that the jeans in the above video probably have about $20 in material. Labor is the killer: Cutting, sewing and finishing one of those dresses is a 20 - 30 hour job. There are other costs too, some ongoing like customer service, shipping, marketing, some one time, like grading patterns so that you can make more than one size of an item, or getting photos taken of it for your store. There isn't really a lot of "tech" in clothing manufacture. Sewing machines haven't changed much in 50 years, the fact that 50 year old equipment is STILL used for production should tell you something about the industry. It is HARD to automate something that is so nuanced. The way it happens in an industrial setting is the same way its always been done. Lots of people doing the same job over and over on an assembly line. Yes some things have been automated to some degree but not to the extent they have in other industries. Edit: Yes I have made jeans for myself before, but never at scale.
- pkaye 10y ago
  Despite all the effort involved, when I look up online, most of the $225 jeans is markup. One website mentioned for a $200 pairs of jeans, $21 for the materials, $6 for labor and $8 for for overseas factory profit. So really a lot of it is markup, middlemen, branding, etc. Yet is is convenient to blame it on the high cost of labor to manufacturer it.
  - chris_va 10y ago
    Keep in mind that the vast majority of clothing is not sold at retail prices (and some of it is not sold ever). It depends on the brand, but maybe %20 is a good ballpark. Also, there are development costs, etc. Finally, the manufacturer isn't seeing $200. They only get the wholesale price (if they are lucky), or a percentage after the sale. With factories often needing payment upfront, and the brand not making money until after a sale occurs (if ever), there is a lot of risk that needs to be priced into the product.
  - zer00eyz 10y ago
    IN the case of the video linked it is a one man shop, in Oakland CA USA. 20$ in material is probably right on the money. other costs are probably 20$ (power, equipment upkeep)... The rest is pay for himself. It probably takes 6-10 hours to build a pair of jeans at the level he is doing it at, and that leaves him making a reasonable hourly rate
  - tiatia 10y ago
    "most of the $225 jeans is markup." I don't like your wording here. While you don't say it is "profit", it seems to suggest it. How a about costs for the salesperson in the US? Rent for the store? Branding and marketing costs may be huge. I recently looked into hand made automatic watches. The main difference between the major brands and smaller (EU based) unknown brands seems to be marketing. You can't pick up a life style magazine of visit an airport without advertisement for watches. This costs money.
- theklub 10y ago
  Here is another, http://www.hartforddenimcompany.com/ http://www.hartforddenimcompany.com/ Same thing though, basically a luxury product.
- discardorama 10y ago
  FTA: there are 200,000 people employed in Xintang, making 300M jeans/year. That's an average of 1500 jeans/employee. Assuming an average wage of 30K/employee, that's $20/jean extra. Surely not a bank-breaking sum? Jeans vary in prices from about $30 - $300, so an additional $20/jean isn't outside the realm of possibility.
- gnopgnip 10y ago
  You can get USA made jeans for under $40. Round House and Union Line both have them. Roy charges $225 because people will pay. You can get a pair of $200 designer jeans that were made in India or Tunisia.
anu7df 10y ago
I understand the economic reality (aka greed) that led to this. But if production was made local again, how does one handle the environmental impact? Or is there no way to make a durable good pair of jeans without destroying the environment?
- hyperliner 10y ago
  There is always a way. However, taking care of the environment would add expenses to the production process and, as a result, the cost of the pair of jean would have to increase, as would the price. Once that happens, we would then skip that environment-conscious product for one that did not have that cost embedded. I was reading an article about the price competition in airlines. People would spend 30 minutes looking for a better deal, to get a flight that would be $5 cheaper. If we do that for a product that basically flies you through space, imagine what you would do with a product that is disposable. I guess the hypocrisy is that we don't want to talk about that issue. We would rather not have immigrants picking tomatoes, or sewing jeans. We can always just transfer that production to China, where the environmental and human effects are invisible to us.
  - anu7df 10y ago
    I agree to what you are saying, to an extent. Yes I comparison shop when buying air tickets and buy the cheapest, because I am not aware of the environmental impact differences between airlines. While shopping for grocery on the other hand I try to buy from local farmers even at higher costs, though i am gaining much more here as the local products tastes so much better. When it comes to clothes though, it looks like it is made in china or nothing. If clothes were made profitably in the US till 70's and real wages haven't gone up since then, why is it impossible to make clothes here without the astronomical price tags? The raw materials (cotton for example), as the article says, already comes from here.
    - takee 10y ago
      My gut says that it's because the brands have gotten used to a fatter margin/profits, but then I'm no expert.
carsongross 10y ago
This is where, and bear with me on this HN, Donald Trump is right. We in the west, especially us smart folks, cherish our environment, and we think it is shameful to force people to work in inhumane conditions. How fair is it, then, to force our fellow westerners who didn't win the intelligence lottery to compete with labor in countries that don't care one whit about either? It isn't right. The multinationals will shriek bloody murder about it, because they've made a killing engaging in moral arbitrage, but it's time to tariff the hell out of products produced in ecological and human conditions we would find deplorable in our own countries.
- hellbanner 10y ago
  I recommend the book "23 things they don't tell you about capitalism" which looks at how tariffs protect local economies. When economic networks flatten, single entities dominate.
- kelukelugames 10y ago
  I want to upvote this comment but I have no idea what "moral arbitrage" means. Is that like Apple being a green company but its factory works in Asia kill themselves?
  - carsongross 10y ago
    Yes.
  - sosborn 10y ago
    What does "being green" have to do with suicide rates at factories that are, by and large, in line with rates in the U.S.?
    - kelukelugames 10y ago
      Suicides are just the most sensational part. They repeated break labor guidelines set by Apple.
      - 10y ago
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
I find this interesting timing for the documentary/article, as this is certainly not a new phenomenon [1] and if anything is beginning to reverse with "re-shoring." What does seem to be happening is more discussion about the impacts of many of the free trade agreements of the 70's/80's/90's - more specifically how goods made in the US were off-shored as a result. [1]http://www.alternet.org/story/13095/levis%3A_made_in_china http://www.alternet.org/story/13095/levis%3A_made_in_china [2]http://apparel.edgl.com/news/Reshoring-Success-Stories--What-s-Branding-Got-to-Do-with-It-104291 http://apparel.edgl.com/news/Reshoring-Success-Stories--What...
HillaryBriss 10y ago
The explanation behind the title is summarized in this line from the article: "With rock-bottom wages and government assistance, the industry boomed."
induscreep 10y ago
so how does the Japanese raw denim industry compare to US/China?
- Kalium 10y ago
  It's much smaller. It's not quite artisinal anymore, but it's not where the mass-produced jeans the world prefers come from. It's where the high-quality $300-a-pair jeans come from.
- ericdykstra 10y ago
  It's alive and well! But in size and scale, it won't compete with US/China just because of the fact that most people don't care about the quality of their jeans. Like most things, the premium market is much smaller than the "good enough" market. The top brand names for raw denim enthusiasts are still chiefly Japanese companies. I've bought 5 pairs of Japanese denim from 5 different manufacturers over the past 7 years. If anyone has questions about raw denim, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.
  - ksec 10y ago
    I do, what makes different denim great? What makes them Artisian? Why are Japaness Denim better? Is Miracle Air from Uniqlo part of it?
adamconroy 10y ago
Jeans are a weird phenomenon. Ugly, heavy, unflattering fabric. They only look good on people who would look good no matter what they wore. Worse still, they are like a disease. I was in a bar/restaurant recently, and I couldn't help but notice how many people were wearing jeans. So I did a visual survey, and as far as I could tell, out of about 40 people, only myself and one other lady were not wearing them. Even my wife was in a pair.
- lpsz 10y ago
  It's a US thing for everyone (regardless of gender and age) to dress in jeans and sneakers. Curiously not the case elsewhere in the world, though.
  - techsupporter 10y ago
    I wear jeans (made in the U.S.[0]), sneakers (made in the U.S.[1]), and t-shirts (made in the U.S.[2]) because they're comfortable. On the other hand, I very rarely go out to any place that most anyone would call fancy. "Fine dining" for my spouse and I is Taco Time or a couple of places in Ballard[3] that we know to be open late and have cheap late happy hour food menus. (Oh, and socks[4], too.) 0 - http://texasjeans.com/ http://texasjeans.com/ 1 - http://www.newbalance.com/made-in-usa-1/ http://www.newbalance.com/made-in-usa-1/ 2 - http://store.americanapparel.net/en/ http://store.americanapparel.net/en/ 3 - Seattle 4 - http://www.socks4life.com/specials/made-in-usa.html http://www.socks4life.com/specials/made-in-usa.html
- brusch64 10y ago
  What would be your alternative ? You think that people look better in working casuals ? Suits ? From your comment I would suppose that you are living in the US. I personally wear jeans pretty much exclusively and have no problem with it. I prefer and search for heavy jeans. In my opinion people always look better in fitting clothes. If they are wearing unfitting jeans, they are going to look bad in it. If they are wearing unfitting suits, they gonna look bad in it. If they wear fitting clothes nearly everything works. Many years back I've worked with an American company (I am from Europe) and they really didn't like us wearing jeans all the time (a totally normal thing to do in Europe where I am living). They said it didn't look professionel enough if you aren't wearing working casuals.

55 points by okfine 10y ago

As someone who has the skills (cutting, sewing, buttons, rivets) to make a pair of jeans there is a really simple reason that we (the USA) don't make jeans any more: cost. Lets take a look at one guy making jeans in the US: http://www.roydenim.com/video http://www.roydenim.com/video (video is a great place to start, you get a sense of what the work looks like). But for $225 a pair, its an indulgence.

unethical_ban 10y ago
You should have the skills to operate the machine that makes 5,000 pairs a day. Why can't mass manufacturing in America be a thing?
- thrownaway2424 10y ago
  Mass manufacturing is a thing in America. America makes more stuff than any other country except, quite recently, China.
  - chris_va 10y ago
    Also let's not forget regulation (even good regulation) is expensive to follow.
- evanpw 10y ago
  US industrial output is way up over the past few decades; it's just industrial employment that's way down.
- michaelt 10y ago
  operate the machine that makes 5,000 pairs a day Robotics engineer here. It turns out it's ridiculously difficult to make machines that will reliably deal with small, flexible, sometimes-overlapping, sometimes-folded, identically coloured bits of fabric. You can automate parts of the garment-making process - embroidery, cutting things from rolls, stuff like that - but sewing the bits together automatically is really difficult for a machine, compared to a human. If you've got clever solutions for this feel free to advance the technology - I'd really like a robot that can do my laundry :)
  - lazaroclapp 10y ago
    This is probably fairly naive, but does having non-identically couloured bits of fabric help? Maybe by using temporary dyes that can be washed out at the end of the fabrication process (or evaporate before that)?
  - RGamma 10y ago
    It's somehow hard to believe that clever engineers couldn't come up with something, although I don't have anything to offer in this regard. Maybe one would need to think about entirely different sewing patterns (that must look the part) and cloth stretching/folding mechanisms for this problem. It's easy to see why you (with current technology) can't simply "make a robot that does what the human does" here.
    - Kalium 10y ago
      http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21651925-robotic-sewing-machine-could-throw-garment-workers-low-cost-countries-out http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21651925-... So, the technology exists, more or less. Like all new technology, it takes time to roll out.
    - zer00eyz 10y ago
      You have a totally valid line of thinking going on. Take something like the humble T-shirt. The process of making those is way more "automated" than it was even 30 years ago. The reason for this is that the t-shirt hasn't changed THAT much in 30 years, and is now more popular than ever. Due to the material, and the pattern, there is a lot of it that is the exact same step between product variations (size, cut etc) or can be done on the same machine the same way. However, something as simple as pants, not only change seasonaly (shorts) but they change annualy. It is easier for a car manufacturer to build an automated assembly line for welding a frame, than it is for a manufacturer of clothing to do the same for "this seasons" hot item. For the sake of argument, if we all agreed to wear bellbottoms for the rest of time as our only pants, and to only make them out of one kind of denim, it would STILL be hard for all the reasons mentioned above, but we would have reason to automate (scale). Even then, your producing the pants in 60 some odd waist/lenght combos for men, never mind women, children, teens.
- zer00eyz 10y ago
  It can be: american giant is an example. Having recently gotten one of their hoodies, I can say that the quality is excellent vs what you might buy at target/gap/local retail. But it isn't the stitching or the fabric that is the reason for me disposing of a hoodie (as an example) its going to be staining, or unavoidable damage (snagged my clothing on something).
- proyb 10y ago
  If needle break or misalignment in sewing, it become a defective. Same as there are defective PCB in the manufacturing.
airplane 10y ago
I am guessing you made jeans before, if so can you share and estimate the cost of materials and time it takes for one pair of jeans? Am curious because $225 for time and materials seems like too much to me. Perhaps these guys in the video run too small of an operation to have the costs spread around and to invest in tech to speed up the process.
- zer00eyz 10y ago
  Not jeans, but rather very expensive dresses, and at a very small scale. 1500$ dress, has probably $150-200 in material (bought at/near wholesale prices), I'm sure that the jeans in the above video probably have about $20 in material. Labor is the killer: Cutting, sewing and finishing one of those dresses is a 20 - 30 hour job. There are other costs too, some ongoing like customer service, shipping, marketing, some one time, like grading patterns so that you can make more than one size of an item, or getting photos taken of it for your store. There isn't really a lot of "tech" in clothing manufacture. Sewing machines haven't changed much in 50 years, the fact that 50 year old equipment is STILL used for production should tell you something about the industry. It is HARD to automate something that is so nuanced. The way it happens in an industrial setting is the same way its always been done. Lots of people doing the same job over and over on an assembly line. Yes some things have been automated to some degree but not to the extent they have in other industries. Edit: Yes I have made jeans for myself before, but never at scale.
pkaye 10y ago
Despite all the effort involved, when I look up online, most of the $225 jeans is markup. One website mentioned for a $200 pairs of jeans, $21 for the materials, $6 for labor and $8 for for overseas factory profit. So really a lot of it is markup, middlemen, branding, etc. Yet is is convenient to blame it on the high cost of labor to manufacturer it.
- chris_va 10y ago
  Keep in mind that the vast majority of clothing is not sold at retail prices (and some of it is not sold ever). It depends on the brand, but maybe %20 is a good ballpark. Also, there are development costs, etc. Finally, the manufacturer isn't seeing $200. They only get the wholesale price (if they are lucky), or a percentage after the sale. With factories often needing payment upfront, and the brand not making money until after a sale occurs (if ever), there is a lot of risk that needs to be priced into the product.
- zer00eyz 10y ago
  IN the case of the video linked it is a one man shop, in Oakland CA USA. 20$ in material is probably right on the money. other costs are probably 20$ (power, equipment upkeep)... The rest is pay for himself. It probably takes 6-10 hours to build a pair of jeans at the level he is doing it at, and that leaves him making a reasonable hourly rate
- tiatia 10y ago
  "most of the $225 jeans is markup." I don't like your wording here. While you don't say it is "profit", it seems to suggest it. How a about costs for the salesperson in the US? Rent for the store? Branding and marketing costs may be huge. I recently looked into hand made automatic watches. The main difference between the major brands and smaller (EU based) unknown brands seems to be marketing. You can't pick up a life style magazine of visit an airport without advertisement for watches. This costs money.
theklub 10y ago
Here is another, http://www.hartforddenimcompany.com/ http://www.hartforddenimcompany.com/ Same thing though, basically a luxury product.
discardorama 10y ago
FTA: there are 200,000 people employed in Xintang, making 300M jeans/year. That's an average of 1500 jeans/employee. Assuming an average wage of 30K/employee, that's $20/jean extra. Surely not a bank-breaking sum? Jeans vary in prices from about $30 - $300, so an additional $20/jean isn't outside the realm of possibility.
gnopgnip 10y ago
You can get USA made jeans for under $40. Round House and Union Line both have them. Roy charges $225 because people will pay. You can get a pair of $200 designer jeans that were made in India or Tunisia.

anu7df 10y ago

I understand the economic reality (aka greed) that led to this. But if production was made local again, how does one handle the environmental impact? Or is there no way to make a durable good pair of jeans without destroying the environment?

hyperliner 10y ago
There is always a way. However, taking care of the environment would add expenses to the production process and, as a result, the cost of the pair of jean would have to increase, as would the price. Once that happens, we would then skip that environment-conscious product for one that did not have that cost embedded. I was reading an article about the price competition in airlines. People would spend 30 minutes looking for a better deal, to get a flight that would be $5 cheaper. If we do that for a product that basically flies you through space, imagine what you would do with a product that is disposable. I guess the hypocrisy is that we don't want to talk about that issue. We would rather not have immigrants picking tomatoes, or sewing jeans. We can always just transfer that production to China, where the environmental and human effects are invisible to us.
- anu7df 10y ago
  I agree to what you are saying, to an extent. Yes I comparison shop when buying air tickets and buy the cheapest, because I am not aware of the environmental impact differences between airlines. While shopping for grocery on the other hand I try to buy from local farmers even at higher costs, though i am gaining much more here as the local products tastes so much better. When it comes to clothes though, it looks like it is made in china or nothing. If clothes were made profitably in the US till 70's and real wages haven't gone up since then, why is it impossible to make clothes here without the astronomical price tags? The raw materials (cotton for example), as the article says, already comes from here.
  - takee 10y ago
    My gut says that it's because the brands have gotten used to a fatter margin/profits, but then I'm no expert.

carsongross 10y ago

This is where, and bear with me on this HN, Donald Trump is right. We in the west, especially us smart folks, cherish our environment, and we think it is shameful to force people to work in inhumane conditions. How fair is it, then, to force our fellow westerners who didn't win the intelligence lottery to compete with labor in countries that don't care one whit about either? It isn't right. The multinationals will shriek bloody murder about it, because they've made a killing engaging in moral arbitrage, but it's time to tariff the hell out of products produced in ecological and human conditions we would find deplorable in our own countries.

hellbanner 10y ago
I recommend the book "23 things they don't tell you about capitalism" which looks at how tariffs protect local economies. When economic networks flatten, single entities dominate.
kelukelugames 10y ago
I want to upvote this comment but I have no idea what "moral arbitrage" means. Is that like Apple being a green company but its factory works in Asia kill themselves?
- carsongross 10y ago
  Yes.
- sosborn 10y ago
  What does "being green" have to do with suicide rates at factories that are, by and large, in line with rates in the U.S.?
  - kelukelugames 10y ago
    Suicides are just the most sensational part. They repeated break labor guidelines set by Apple.
    - 10y ago

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

I find this interesting timing for the documentary/article, as this is certainly not a new phenomenon [1] and if anything is beginning to reverse with "re-shoring." What does seem to be happening is more discussion about the impacts of many of the free trade agreements of the 70's/80's/90's - more specifically how goods made in the US were off-shored as a result. [1]http://www.alternet.org/story/13095/levis%3A_made_in_china http://www.alternet.org/story/13095/levis%3A_made_in_china [2]http://apparel.edgl.com/news/Reshoring-Success-Stories--What-s-Branding-Got-to-Do-with-It-104291 http://apparel.edgl.com/news/Reshoring-Success-Stories--What...

HillaryBriss 10y ago

The explanation behind the title is summarized in this line from the article: "With rock-bottom wages and government assistance, the industry boomed."

induscreep 10y ago

so how does the Japanese raw denim industry compare to US/China?

Kalium 10y ago
It's much smaller. It's not quite artisinal anymore, but it's not where the mass-produced jeans the world prefers come from. It's where the high-quality $300-a-pair jeans come from.
ericdykstra 10y ago
It's alive and well! But in size and scale, it won't compete with US/China just because of the fact that most people don't care about the quality of their jeans. Like most things, the premium market is much smaller than the "good enough" market. The top brand names for raw denim enthusiasts are still chiefly Japanese companies. I've bought 5 pairs of Japanese denim from 5 different manufacturers over the past 7 years. If anyone has questions about raw denim, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.
- ksec 10y ago
  I do, what makes different denim great? What makes them Artisian? Why are Japaness Denim better? Is Miracle Air from Uniqlo part of it?

adamconroy 10y ago

Jeans are a weird phenomenon. Ugly, heavy, unflattering fabric. They only look good on people who would look good no matter what they wore. Worse still, they are like a disease. I was in a bar/restaurant recently, and I couldn't help but notice how many people were wearing jeans. So I did a visual survey, and as far as I could tell, out of about 40 people, only myself and one other lady were not wearing them. Even my wife was in a pair.

lpsz 10y ago
It's a US thing for everyone (regardless of gender and age) to dress in jeans and sneakers. Curiously not the case elsewhere in the world, though.
- techsupporter 10y ago
  I wear jeans (made in the U.S.[0]), sneakers (made in the U.S.[1]), and t-shirts (made in the U.S.[2]) because they're comfortable. On the other hand, I very rarely go out to any place that most anyone would call fancy. "Fine dining" for my spouse and I is Taco Time or a couple of places in Ballard[3] that we know to be open late and have cheap late happy hour food menus. (Oh, and socks[4], too.) 0 - http://texasjeans.com/ http://texasjeans.com/ 1 - http://www.newbalance.com/made-in-usa-1/ http://www.newbalance.com/made-in-usa-1/ 2 - http://store.americanapparel.net/en/ http://store.americanapparel.net/en/ 3 - Seattle 4 - http://www.socks4life.com/specials/made-in-usa.html http://www.socks4life.com/specials/made-in-usa.html
brusch64 10y ago
What would be your alternative ? You think that people look better in working casuals ? Suits ? From your comment I would suppose that you are living in the US. I personally wear jeans pretty much exclusively and have no problem with it. I prefer and search for heavy jeans. In my opinion people always look better in fitting clothes. If they are wearing unfitting jeans, they are going to look bad in it. If they are wearing unfitting suits, they gonna look bad in it. If they wear fitting clothes nearly everything works. Many years back I've worked with an American company (I am from Europe) and they really didn't like us wearing jeans all the time (a totally normal thing to do in Europe where I am living). They said it didn't look professionel enough if you aren't wearing working casuals.