A Trend Near Its End

Here is a snippet from a post that will appear on my Art Contrarian blog sooner or later.

I've been noticing for quite a while a number of young women wearing tattered jeans.  But now the weather was getting quite cool, and I was still seeing a lot of bare leg peeking out behind all those tatters.  This post was triggered in early December when I walked past the display window of my local American Eagle Outfitters store and saw some seriously "distressed" women's jeans on display. How much more distressing is possible?, I wondered.  Not much, I concluded.

Some background.  Half a century ago, young men bought blue jeans from Levi's, Wrangler's and other brands.  They were stiff and uniformly dyed.  After a year or so of steady wear, the fabric would soften and the color faded, often in areas such as the knees and thighs.   Eventually cuffs might become frayed and fabric might begin to wear through at the knees.  This kind of wear-and-tear became something of a status thing.  Some wearers of well-used jeans began to look down on folks wearing those stiff, new jeans.   Clothing companies eventually caught on to this and marketed factory-faded garments.  In recent years outfits such as Ralph Lauren were selling men's jeans that were not only pre-faded, but had factory-made fraying here and there.  This trend led to mass-produced worn-through knee areas on pant legs.  And beyond, though mostly for women's jeans

Two examples from American Eagle's website are shown below.

Gallery

Here is more or less the initial case of manufactured frayed-through jeans knees.

And this is how extreme it has become.