Is $96 And Up For A Pair Of Jeans Reasonable?

I tend not to ask rhetorical questions. At least not in the titles of my blog posts. I'm asking whether $96 and up for a pair of jeans is reasonable because I don't know, not because I'm sure it's unreasonable.

Premium Men's Jeans At a Fair Price.

That's what the ad for Mott & Bow jeans says.

Apparently there's some parallel yuppie universe in which $80 and up for hoodies, $35 and up for frickin' T-shirts and $96 and up for jeans are considered reasonable prices. I wonder, if I were a billionaire, would I be interested in such items, or would I still think they were made to fleece overprivileged hipsters? (Not that I'm necessarily against sticking it to overprivileged hipsters.) (Especially not after Bernie's campaign.)

Well, at least they didn't say "Just Regular Old Men's Jeans At a Fair Price". Their claim is that they are offering premium jeans for $96 and up.

Maybe these jeans really are special. The most comfortable jeans I've ever worn were made by GAP. I wore them, but I didn't own them. I've never been able to afford stuff from GAP. I was working as a painter's assistant, and I was doing his laundry, and he let me thrown my laundry in with his and wear a pair of his GAP jeans while mine were being washed. I think I may have borrowed other GAP items such as sweatshirts and briefs, from him and other people, but at the very least, I'm certain that I've worn at least one pair of GAP jeans, and that they were, in my opinion, the finest jeans I've ever worn. Black jeans. Very comfortable.

(If you're wondering, "Who gets such items of clothing loaned to him?" maybe it will make more sense to you if you know that I was homeless or teetering on the brink of homelessness at that time, and didn't own very many clothes.)

That was more than 20 years ago. I haven't been shopping at GAP in the meantime, so for all I knew, they might be selling their men's jeans for $100 a pair these days. [*googling*] I googled them, and it seems these days most GAP jeans are going for between $50 and $70 a pair. I see some from Gap Factory for as little as $33.99. And I see that apparently these days people spell it Gap, not GAP.

I try to be a good Leftist, which includes solidarity with people who are gettin' screwed and can't afford to shop at the Gap. But the truth is, having experienced those very-nice jeans 20 years ago (and I think some other items from the Gap as well), that if I were a wealthy Leftist, I would be tempted to shop at the Gap, for comfy duds.

And I would be curious about whether I agreed with Mott & Bow that their jeans are so extraordinary that their pricing is actually reasonable. (And I would be curious about whether their were still more delightful jeans somewhere at still higher prices.)

And now I'm also curious about whether Mott & Bow tend to use horribly exploitative sweatshop labor less than other clothing manufacturers. I tend not to think about sweatshops much, because I tend not to think about the clothing industry in general very much. Maybe I think about sweatshops less than an upstanding Leftist should. What got me thinking about them now is that Mott & Bow's ads seemed to be portraying them as good people.

Who offer clothing at reasonable prices.