The quality difference would have to be substantial. I bring in a very high income for my area, and the thought of spending $300-$400 on a single pair of jeans is pretty out there.
An $80 pair of jeans, which will often be on sale for $40-$50 will last me for 2-3 years and are of average quality.
It seems to me like one would have to justify these jeans on the fashion/novelty aspect, and not quality/value as it just isn't there imho.
If you take a pair of unwashed 501s and compare them to a pair of unwashed Iron Heart denim, you will see that the quality difference is substantial. Whether that matters is something you have to decide for yourself
Since I wear denim almost everyday, the quality difference and the attention to detail matters to me. It reminds me that attention to detail matters in my own work
I don't understand why engineers tend to care so little about the quality of their clothes
I don't understand why engineers tend to care so little about the quality of their clothes
Virtue signaling. It says you're focused on your intellectual pursuits rather than material things (in contrast to 'the suits'). This is actually great from a hiring manager's point of view, because you can also guess (guess, not know) from someone's appearance whether they are single and to what degree they take care of themselves, while will in turn give an idea of how much work you can pile onto them before they figure it out or change their personality.
For those who don't 'get' clothes (as a former sufferer): you may not be able to readily distinguish expensive clothes from cheap ones, or see the point of wearing them. But other people do, and if you look like money, you will be able to get more money in negotiations. If you look or say that you don't care about such things, you'll get lots of affirmation and less money, because affirmation is virtually free.
There's also a kind of signaling by people who are rich enough not to care about these things and dress accordingly, which is a way of reminding other people that you have so much money you don't care about what impression you make. This only works when people already know you're wealthy, though.
Oh please. Virtue signalling is a useful topic, but it gets really tiresome to see people who just discovered the concept run around and excitedly apply it to everything, like a child with a new toy.
The downside of higher quality clothing (money) is obvious: it's the upside that needs explaining. Fashion is the prototypical example of signaling, and quality as held separate from fashion has a couple minor advantages like being long-lasting and marginally more comfortable that many people feel aren't worth the price.
I dress moderately well, but that's largely against my preferences. I do it because I'm aware that people treat you differently based on how you look and how you dress, and I've decided that the cost and annoyance of putting together a good wardrobe is worth the benefits. To be clear, I've got a pretty low opinion of those who judge others based on their attire, but I'm realistic (and cynical) enough to get that that's the world I live in.
I've worked with a lot of incredibly smart engineers at places like Google, and the people I know pretty much ran the gamut of caring about the quality of their clothing. The only difference is that they tended to have their work performance judged on productivity instead of fashion so, relative to others, their calculus for how to dress included one less variable in favor of dressing up.
I think there are other reasons to dress well other than just signaling.
I personally find psychological benefits to dressing nicely -- I feel much more industrious and "ready-to-work" when I wear a nice outfit to work compared to tshirt/jeans/sneakers, plus I get a nice "switch" effect when I get home and can take it all off. Similarly, I feel more prepared to exercise when I switch into my exercise clothes, even though those DO have "real" benefits thanks to their cut and material.
Beyond that, the signaling can be extensive. Not all signals are "quality" -- you can dress to show off your creativity or as a means of expression (I personally love to thrift/vintage shop and learn about fashion trends from other eras). You can dress to emphasize/de-emphasize various aspects of your face and body, presumably for sex appeal. And sure, you can dress to show that you've got money to spend.
But a lot of times, people dress to fit in. This can apparently get venomous in certain professions (finance, for one). In tech, there's often a dress code, as described in this comment[1], and "dressing like you don't understand why people care about nice clothing" is realistically pretty close to it.
Sure I agree with you on this, and I didn't intend for my comment to sound like there's no case for dressing nicely beyond signaling. When I said that the side requiring justification is that of dressing nicely, personal explanations like yours are exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of.
What I was arguing against is the maximizing impulse on the _other_ end: the notion that it's so self-evidently universally valuable that the primary reason to not dress well would be Virtue signaling.
That comment you linked to is just flat bullshit. People who desperately try to justify strict old-fashioned dress codes somehow conflate "you can literally lose your job if you don't dress this way" with "I feel awkward being the only person dressed this way, even in the absence of anyone else's reaction". It's insane to me that so many people uncritically parrot this utter nonsense.
It may different by local culture, but I have tech colleagues who take care about how they look and are pretty stylish. Not really suits, but officially looking shirt. I did not noticed any discrimination against them.
There is also big difference between formal rules you can be fired for not following and informal ones - informal are still limiting but people cross them once in a while and you often finds it is actually ok in the long term.
People like to generalize tech as if everything would be stereotypical frat like start up, but it is not the case.
> really tiresome to see people who just discovered the concept
Curious, were you wearing your higher quality clothing when you made this comment ?
For some, more expensive clothes increases their sense of superiority. I, for example, am less polite and less patient when I have to dress well. It isn't so much of a problem now that I am aware of it.
I don't think describing a common thought pattern has much to do with an increased sense of superiority. Have you never spoken about a behavior or activity that you think is bad? Were you exhibiting a superiority complex each time? Give me a break.
I don't feel the psychological effects of dressing well particularly strongly, but I acknowledge that others do and I don't think there's anything wrong with those feelings.
That's a very different position from being small minded enough to universalize one's own attitudes towards attire to "explain" the behavior of those who may not feel the same way as you. _That's_ what I was arguing against, the idea that virtue signalling must be the reason for putting less money and time into attire because people couldn't _possibly_ have different preferences.
Sorry, I looked back at the comment and realize that some of it was unnecessary to say. I've got a pretty nasty cold and I'm home sick bored put of my mind so my mood probably wasn't the best when I made that comment.
> There's also a kind of signaling by people who are rich enough not to care about these things and dress accordingly, which is a way of reminding other people that you have so much money you don't care about what impression you make. This only works when people already know you're wealthy, though.
Fussell notes this in his Class. The group he categorizes as "top out-of-sight" (mostly old money) is genuinely beyond caring about appearances and are where you get a lot of "eccentric" rich-person behavior like wearing really cheap clothes. Upper-class folks, especially younger ones, may very carefully and deliberately dress way down, especially when traveling (for some reason), though they will not, and will not intend to, actually blend in.
Separately but somewhat relatedly, he claims that higher classes will tend to buy unexceptional things where spending more is seen as primarily a status signaling thing, and especially when the thing is in any way technological—so buying a flashy, expensive, new car belongs to the sensibilities of the upper-middle classes and lower (regardless of their income—talking about socialized class, not income) while the comfortably rich might just own a beat-up Chevy, or an old luxury car.
Where you do not see people do it is when there's a risk they might actually be mistaken for belonging to any part of Fussell's "prole" category—so, upper-middle and, especially, middle.
Fussell's book was written prior to "hipsters" as we know them, but many tenets of "hipster fashion" are predicated on some of the same logic as "upper-class folks intentionally dressing down" -- educated, urban, corporate-employed, well-to-do young people dressing "down" in streetwear or workwear like Carhartt (this one really confused my parents). Obviously they will not be construed as a member of the rural working class, as they live in a city, and the racial dimension also plays a (fairly disgusting, if you think about it) role.
Also, although the parts you selected are pretty reasonable and provide insight in this discussion, I would advise taking Fussell's book with some caution: it is an entertaining read but it is not definitive or really all that well-supported beyond his personal observations, and it slices a particular time and culture that seems to be on the wane (as the American middle class disappears, and the nature of the working class changes).
I think it's still fairly useful. It provides an interesting framework for understanding Trump's tastes—or, maybe, the taste he projects in order to market specifically to prole and middle (not upper-middle or higher) people who've moved into higher wealth brackets—for instance. I think it's also useful for understanding which class is being targeted by advertising—the class markers and attitudes it covers, and others that one might infer, are everywhere in advertising.
His "Class X" stuff was way off, of course, and is another thing the trappings of which became just another class marker (for hipsters, in fact, and some other fashion/lifestyle movements). Probably that's a recurring cycle with countercultures. Some specifics have shifted, though trends and anxieties have not so much, I think. A lot of the visible wealth now is (as usual) new money—often tech folks—so I think it remains to be seen whether their kids and grandkids will retain "lower" (largely upper-middle) class tastes and behaviors or integrate fully into the upper classes.
If you have time would you mind expanding on your point about the racial dimensions of workwear? Aren't most urban "hipsters" white, as are most rural working class people?
Streetwear is where the racial dimension comes into play, not as much with workwear. I could elaborate on some of the racial dimensions of the "hipster", though, if you'd like.
Ah yes, I could definitely see it coming more into play with streetwear.
I could elaborate on some of the racial dimensions of the "hipster", though, if you'd like.
It's not a topic I know much about, so yes, I'd definitely love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
> [The] hipster—and the reference here is to Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro” essay for Dissent in 1957—was explicitly defined by the desire of a white avant-garde to disaffiliate itself from whiteness, with its stain of Eisenhower, the bomb, and the corporation, and achieve the “cool” knowledge and exoticized energy, lust, and violence of black Americans...
> The hipster, in both black and white incarnations, in his essence had been about superior knowledge—what Broyard called “a priorism.” He insisted that hipsterism was developed from a sense that minorities in America were subject to decisions made about their lives by conspiracies of power they could never possibly know. The hip reaction was to insist, purely symbolically, on forms of knowledge that they possessed before anyone else, indeed before the creation of positive knowledge—a priori. Broyard focused on the password language of hip slang.
> The return of the term after 1999 reframed the knowledge question. Hipster, in its revival, referred to an air of knowing about exclusive things before anyone else...
The rest of the article is sort-of a history of various trends in "hipsterism" over the period from 1999 to 2009. But this is quite a digression from the dominance of jeans...
Yeah I was thinking specifically of outdoorsy aristocrats who prefer the stables to the stately home, and have no need to dress up because everyone knows they own half the land around the village. Europeans will probabl be more familiar with this type.
> you may not be able to readily distinguish expensive clothes from cheap ones, or see the point of wearing them. But other people do, and if you look like money, you will be able to get more money in negotiations. If you look or say that you don't care about such things, you'll get lots of affirmation and less money, because affirmation is virtually free.
Some people (me) genuinely are oblivious to the differences - shopping is annoying chore and it just does not make enough difference. You basically want to be done with it and wear whatever is generally socially appropriate as long as you can.
I don't wear expensive jeans, but I've found that often with expensive things, you don't realise what you're missing out on until you try something better.
Binoculars is a good example. You've probably only ever looked through a $50 pair of binos, and thought that looks good enough. But compare it to a $500 set, and the difference will seem like night and day.
At $200 you can buy Outlier pants (or Mission Workshop, no experience with those though). At $400 you can buy freaking Arc'teryx Veilance pants. That's way too much for something that is just cotton (and not even etaProof or anything interesting).
The main appeal of high-end raw denim is not its utility or technical performance. In fact, denimheads cherish flaws in their jeans. For example, fabric with yarn unevenness and imperfections is prized as "slubby", and the objectively weak chain-stitched hem is highly sought after. These flaws add character and uniqueness.
What is exciting about raw denim is that it develops highly personal wear patterns that reflect your life over a long period of time. Picture a beat-up pickup truck, or a pair of boots. You've had it for years, taken it everywhere, it's full of stories. That's the idea.
Tell that to someone who'd buy a pair of Vetements pants for $1200[1]. And it's standard Levi's denim! But hey, the fly goes all the way around...
In other words, the fashion aspect does matter to people, oftentimes more than any practical aspect. (I think sometimes people take it to a silly degree...)
So long ago that it seems like another life, I used to work at Barney's New York. The people who think nothing of dropping $1,200+ on a pair of jeans, or $500 on a T-Shirt don't even remotely take practicality into consideration.
I don't think Vetements is a fair comparison though as they're based around that sort of hype and designer fashion. There's really no reason for such high prices aside from exclusivity and who the designers are. If some people like that, that's fine, but they're not being bought specifically for quality and looks you can't find elsewhere.
Even the founder/designer jokes that he wouldn't pay full price for his own designs.
> My friends very often can’t afford the clothes. Like myself, I wear prototypes but I don’t think I’m crazy fashion enough to go and buy those things. I’d rather go on holiday. I feel like it brings more use. Holidays are important. Holidays and quality time on your sofa.
Heh, yeah, that was sort-of what I wanted to emphasize. I feel like some of the appeal of high-priced denim is for the fashion aspects, even if the quality is a little better than Levi's or similar mass-produced stuff.
> Even the founder/designer jokes that he wouldn't pay full price for his own designs.
I really don't blame him. A lot of it seems like jokey conceptual art stuff. Cute to look at/think about but I probably wouldn't wear.
Agree! I have several pairs of Outliers from 4-5 years ago, still look new. Price to value of something like Outlier or Ministry of Supply speaks to me, pay more but it will last. You also get benefits like water resistance and strechability for things like cycling.
Tripling the Outlier comment. They are current the best pants on the planet and I challenge any HN commenter to show me better technical biz casual slacks. I basically only wear Outlier, Duluth Trading Co, and Uniqlo. And nice shoes.
I'm partial to Bluffworks personally. I've sat in an office for 8 hours a day in them, hiked, ran, bouldered, rode motorcycles through the mountains of Vietnam, swam, the gamut. Anything I do in any other specialized pant(jeans, sweatpants, khakis, Carhartt work pants, etc), I've done in them to see how they take it. They've held up beautifully.
Prices aren't always so high. I think $150-200 is more common, and there's even ones like Unbranded that run $80-120 (and go on sale too). It's still a bit more than regular jeans, but I like jeans a lot, and I spend more time wearing jeans than I do playing Xbox or something, so I don't mind spending more on my favorite pair of jeans.
Another particular reason people love raw denim is the high contrast fades that match your body because you faded them.
Here's a picture someone posted to reddit.com/r/rawdenim a little while ago, 1 year heavy wear with an $120 pair of Unbranded:
I wonder how this picture (captioned "Daily wear riding motorcycles") works with the common american attitude of washing their clothes after wearing them just once?
I know some people will wear jeans two/three times before washing them, but changing clothes daily is still expected in the office environment. So you will need at least 5 different pairs to cycle through each week. At the end of the year each pair is worn ~60 times, and washed about < 20 times.
I personally buy cheap $30 jeans, have ~10 in active rotation, only wear them on workdays and wash them all once a month. They last for years. I throw them away not because they are worn out, but because my preference changes. So for me all this talk about quality of the more expensive jeans doesn't ring true.
> 2-3 washes I think? And. 2 soaks in a hot bath tub. But also multiple, uncountable amounts of getting caught in the pouring rain riding a motorcycle. I remember riding during hurricane Hermine wearing them
With raw denim (and especially on the subreddit and other internet forums) not washing it is almost a badge of honor. Months or longer in some cases. Because you're right, you don't need to wash them very often, and also washing them causes them to fade overall, so you lose some contrast.
> I personally buy cheap $30 jeans, have ~10 in active rotation
Ah, but that's the difference, this is often someone's only pair of jeans. So you're comparing $300 of jeans to a $122 pair of jeans. I rotate between a few pairs because I need the variety, but some people may end up wearing a single pair of jeans over 300 times in a year and washing it once or twice.
In the kind of office where jeans are allowed/expected, does anyone actually notice or care whether they're a different pair every day? (Different shirt every day, definitely, but jeans?)
A huge chunk of that price is because these guys are importing them from Japan, and selling in brick and mortar stores in the US. You are paying a significant sum for the convenience of ordering them. If you know what you want, you can order them from rakuten with a bit of google translate directly. Also, the law of diminishing returns and all that. The sweet spot is generally $75-$150, even for fancy raw denim jeans if you look out for deals etc.
How does one nail down sizing on stuff like this? I imagine returns to a Japanese-only store from a US address, for someone who doesn't speak Japanese, and crossing a cultural barrier for how sales/service should work, are nightmarish, so you'd want to get it right the first time.
Yeah, that's why I said 'if you know what you want'. It's not that bad though. The listings have accurate measurements. You do need to have a general sense of what would work for you though. The only variable that you are choosing really is waist size. Jeans are not hemmed anyway.
I see that makes a lot of sense. The jeans I am wearing now were originally ~ $80 so $75-$150 is much more reasonable to me. They do look really nice, I was just slightly shocked by the $300-$400 prices.
Reasonably priced. Exceptional quality. And you get to support a community of jeans makers in Wales.
Also — free repairs for life. I've sent a couple of pairs back a few times because I wear the hell out of my jeans, and they return with repairs almost more beautiful than the original fabric.
Truly one of those rare companies that does one thing extremely well.
These are jeans you only have one pair of, that you wear EVERY DAY. They are worth it but it's like buying a nice sports car or nice purse. It's the same thing. Invest in what you use all the time.
Do you wash ever piece of clothing after wearing it once?
Most pants (in the American sense, not British) should last you at least a couple of days. I'm not going to wash a nice pair of woolen trousers every day.
Not washing them is actually pretty reasonable. I wash my raw denim jeans roughly every 4 or 5 months; this does coincide with how often they actually get dirty.
These denim stores are mostly focused on raw denim, which is generally a much higher quality garment than available normally.