Friday, April 18, 2008

Dear G Living: There's no such thing as five "must-buy" jeans for spring.

As part of my effort to keep up with eco-fashion news (or, as it seems recently, eco-fashion "news"), I subscribe to a soul-crushing number of (supposedly) green blogs. Some are better than others, most most are breathless, greenwashing fashionista sites who want to replace Paris Hilton's accessory dogs with $50 organic cotton T-shirts. But I digress.

Today's G Living post leaves no doubt in my mind about their environmental purity: it's a paean to the Alternative Consumer's list of the top five organic denim jeans. The Alternative Consumer's Victoria Everman offers a spare listing -- five pics and links -- and no explanation of what makes them so fabulous, other than they're being "from some of the most eco fashion forward brands". (Translation: so tight in the butt you need a thong and ranging in price from $108 to $238.) G Living confirms the NWL's suspicion that they really don't give a rat's patootie about climate change in a few quivering lines:

"From skinnies to high waisted, straight leg to boot cut, a cool pair of
jeans (or thirty), are essential capsule wardrobe components for any
serious fashionista."

"now that there are so many fabulous organic varieties on offer, we don’t have to feel guilty about new purchases"

I've never claimed to be a fashionista, and the proof is probably that I haven't owned 30 pairs of jeans in my entire adult life. In fact, I now own 4 pairs all at once, which is a record; they range in age from two to eight years. Moreover, I'm going to pass on this year's skinny jeans as long as I am still sporting this decade's rear end.

Now if (IF!) I were in a mood to replace these jeans right now, here's the NWL pick for "might buy" denim for Spring 2008:

Levi's eco Mid Rise Boot 553 Jeans ($58 until 4/27)
Loomstate "Ethos" straight leg jeans ($89 on sale at Bluefly.com)
Loomstate Cotton Maiden jeans ($98)









2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Right on, Nice White Lady! Come to think of it, I haven't owned 30 pairs of jeans in my adult life, either (and we are essentially the same age.) Recently, I was looking at 5 years worth of summer-with-my-only-grandchild pictures, and was startled to notice that I can be seen wearing the same pants (Royal Robbins hiking cargo pants with the zip-off legs, bought on vacation in 2000) and the same shirt ( some kind of ventilated, long-sleeved summer camping thing from REI) in each of those years. And they are not worn out yet, so they will probably be in this summer's pictures too. Both pants and shirt seemed very expensive when I bought them, and they are both made out of some kind of nylon that feels cotton-like but dries much faster. There's probably something bad about nylon, but there has to be something good about a pair of pants that can be worn regularly every summer for nine years, and does not have to go in the clothes dryer.

Unknown said...

Someone out there needs to figure out a good way to calculate the "wearage" -- like mileage for clothing -- of a garment. I have a feeling that all-cotton T's would not do well using such a measure, and blends of cotton and synthetics would look much better. Plus a "lifetime supply" of them would make less of an impact than a lifetime supply of cotton T's.