Is this a joke? $345 for a pair of jeans! Some of us are hopelessly out of touch.In a recent Good Morning America segment, reporter Marysol Castro detailed an extensive scientific, double-blind, peer-reviewed (not) study pitting a $29 pair of jeans from Old Navy against a $200 pair from Sacks Fifth Avenue. We got a glimpse of one price tag that read $345.00.
One woman claimed to have 2000 pairs of jeans in her closet. And later, Elle Magazine's Fashion News Director, Anne Slowey, actually said, "Most people are charging around $200, so you definitely want to get as much value out of that investment as you can."
No, four shares of Wal-mart will run you about $200, that's an investment. Unless you're name is Levi Strauss, denim is not an investment. Does that woman with 2000 pairs of jeans in her closet realize that at a going rate of $200, she's pissed away several pairs of Sex-and-the-City level designer shoes and handbags? Probably not. ($400,000 for those of you keeping score at home.)
Do I have to say it? The results of the test were inconclusive. Half thought the Old Navy jeans were the more expensive.
Alas, when we buy designer anything, we're not buying jeans, we're buying an ego extension.
"Designer labels," writes spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle in his book, A New Earth, "are expensive and therefore 'exclusive.' If everyone could buy them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of what you paid."
Both Madison Avenue and Wall Street bank on this idea every day. "What keeps the so-called consumer society going," Tolle says, "is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn't work: The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming."
In the annals of history, has there ever been a woman who actually wore out a pair of jeans . . . ever? Not since the hippie era, surely. And yet they keep buying them. Fascinating.
To wear out 2000 pairs of jeans, that woman is going to have to will them to her grandchildren. Maybe they can open up a denim museum, and recoup some of her investment that way.
Photo credit: Style Hive
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