THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409080198
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
For some time now, Americans have been paying a premium for clothes that look as if they have been worn for a long time by someone else.
Stone washed jeans and acid washed jeans, both designed to look like they are well on their way to being worn out, are hot items. One famous catalog used to sell khakis that were frayed at the pockets and cuffs and another sold sweaters and jackets with the sleeves patched before the elbows were worn out.
Any day now, I expect to see a slick catalog selling shirts with ink-stained pockets and ties splattered with your choice of chicken gravy or red spaghetti sauce.
I not only object to the notion of paying more for clothes that are closer to the trash heap, I have a moral objection, too.
We pay other people to do all sorts of things that we ought to do ourselves, but this is too much. We really ought to wear out our own clothes.
There was a time when you bought jeans that were stiff as a board, with a color as deep blue as a sailor's watch cap. The jeans didn't even fit until you had washed them once.
If you were really hip, you washed the new jeans, put them on and let them shrink around your body. Then you had a pair of pants that really fit. It was, in fact, a fit better than any tailor could provide.
You hung them to dry in the sun, so that they would fade slowly, honestly.
Eventually, they would be the perfect shade of light blue. They would not, of course, stay like that forever. Sooner or later, the knees would go thin or the seat would wear out.
It was good to have three or four pairs of jeans going at once so that one pair was always perfect.
It was an ordeal, but it was a ritual, too. It was part of the culture. Everyone knew that you had to buy jeans two inches too big in the waist and three or four inches too long in the legs. It was common knowledge, like knowing that red means stop and green means go.
Now, the consumer seeks, but never finds, instant perfection.
While Americans have fallen for clothes that only look off the rack as if they have been worn before, other people are seeking clothes that really have been worn by someone else.
There is a booming business in the Far East selling ``vintage'' blue jeans. People half way around the world are willing to pay big bucks for pants that we thought we had worn out. In some cases, really old Levis - the ones we wore when we were kids - go for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars a pair.
Talk about people with more money then sense.
But if we continue to buy blue jeans that are half worn out when we get them what are those people going to do for clothes? And what about the men and women who make a living buying and selling ``vintage'' jeans? It could lead to a collapse of the world economy.
I think our duty is clear. We need to go back to buying new jeans and wearing them out for the rest of the world.
Now, if we can interest those people half way around the world in chinos with just a tiny oil stain on the leg or oxford cloth shirts with frayed collars, we'll be in business. by CNB