Fit-right, feel-good jeans are favorites

Like shoes, consumers won’t buy them without trying them on first.

SCRIPPS HOWARD

When Caitlin Smith of McCandless, Pa., vowed to lose weight last spring, she followed an unusual strategy for motivation: She hung her favorite, once perfect-fitting jeans on the wall of her bedroom.

She was 40 pounds and three sizes away from getting back into them, but she had held onto them anyway.

“I just couldn’t let them go.”

The 20-year-old joined Weight Watchers and started working out every day. By mid-October, she had shed the 40 pounds and was again wearing her prized medium-washed American Eagle boot cuts.

The power of fashion — and the perfect pair of blue jeans.

Jeans occupy a unique niche in global and especially Americana fashion because their comfort, durability and affordability have helped them transcend age, class and creed — as well as defy fashion swings.

Yves Saint Laurent said many times that he wished he had invented blue jeans. Janet Jackson said she “can’t live without jeans.” And fashion journalist Diana Vreeland, the 20th century’s most influential arbiter of style before her death in 1989, praised jeans as “the most beautiful things since the gondola.”

Worth a try

You may not own a wristwatch, a button-down shirt, a trench coat or sneakers, but odds are you have some jeans — and more than one pair. Like shoes, you won’t buy them without trying them on first. When you find a pair that fits right in all the right places, you’ll wear them until they’re in tatters.

It’s a big reason why the old styles never go out of style and why sales of jeans in the United States continue to grow. Sales for the 12-month period ending in September topped $15.7 billion — an increase of 6.12 percent over the $14.8 billion generated the prior year, according to the NPD Group Inc., a leading provider of consumer and retail information.

The hottest trends for jeans this season are indigo hues, higher waists and stovetop skinny. But if you’d prefer the more standard styles, they’re on the racks, too.

Not influenced

In fact, although skinny jeans are considered “in,” 70 percent of respondents in a recent People magazine poll said they will not buy that style this year — regardless of which designers are making them and which celebrities are wearing them.

“Customers are not dumb,” said Lawrence Scott, who recently designed and launched a line of jeans at his specialty store, Pittsburgh Jeans Co. The average person doesn’t buy something simply because a celebrity, designer or fashion magazine declares it a must-have, he said.

Especially in jeans — where the importance of a comfortable fit often transcends color or style.

“Denim means a lot to people,” said Alison Sokolove, a fashion industry analyst and trend forecaster with the New York-based Tobe Report. “It’s a way of expressing yourself, a very universal thing. A lot of brands don’t want to be associated with the larger-size market, so jeans that fit right and feel good and last mean a lot to people. So it is emotional.”

And as the most universal of apparel, the jeans category is being updated faster than other fashion categories can cycle in and out of style. Lycra and other stretchy fabrics have been blended with denim to minimize shrinkage and wrinkling, cashmere blends offer incredible softness and genetically unaltered, pesticide-free cotton styles are an outgrowth of the big organic trend.

“They’re constantly searching for that new thing,” said Sokolove, citing likely coming trends such as colored denim and edgier styles.

With so many styles and variations in denim jeans, fit remains the most important quality for consumers. Recently, Shopping.com launched a denim-finding feature that allows women to “try on” up to 50 different pairs of jeans with the click of a mouse based on style preferences and 11 algorithmic calculations of body type.

Today, jeans are common in the workplace, often dressed up in business professional ensembles. A recent survey by Cotton Inc. reported that a steadily growing number of women and men — 67 percent and 70 percent, respectively — prefer jeans to casual slacks and wear them an average of four days a week.

The average American woman owns 8.3 pairs of jeans today compared with 6.5 pairs a decade ago, according to the trade organization. She pays an average $35.83 per pair, $3.15 more than in 1998.

Similarly, American men are paying an average $2 more per pair than eight years ago and own an average 8.23 pairs, about two pairs more than a decade ago.

Much of that growth can be attributed to increased variety, comfort and durability. Bleached, embroidered and ripped jeans have cycled out, but several other trends have extended their popularity beyond the normal two to three seasons.

One example is the luxury jean, also known as “premium denim.” These are meticulously constructed, decadently comfortable versions by high-end designer names such as Michael Kors and Dolce & Gabbana and cult brands like Stitch’s and True Religion. Many shoppers are willing to shell out $200, $500, sometimes more than $1,000 for one pair.