Like many Americans, Ben Ferencz, 26, prefers the look of a well-worn pair of jeans, so he shops for vintage styles. But he does not look for the kind found in bins in used-clothing stores. Instead, he focuses on replicas of old jeans sold at exclusive urban boutiques.
Levi's Rose Bowl, for example, is a limited-edition style that precisely duplicates a pair of 1933 jeans that a Levi's buyer found a few years ago at the Rose Bowl flea market in Pasadena, California. The pants are authentic, down to the cinched back, buttons for suspenders and a leather patch bearing the initials of the National Recovery Administration. They sell for US$198, unless you want a version with the brown stains and hand-sewn denim-blue-thread patches like the original -- those are US$248.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
The jeans were a bit much for his budget, but Ferencz, shopping at Selvedge, on Mulberry Street in Lower Manhattan, fingered the fabric longingly, and said he had happily paid up to US$100 for other models from Levi's vintage collection. "They are nostalgic," he said. "They also make a limited number, so no one else will be wearing them."
Men's jeans are undergoing a revolution.
Not long ago, variation in men's jeans amounted to a zip or button fly or, say, a choice between loose fit for aging baby boomers and baggy for Generation Xers. Just about everything was under US$80.
This season and for next fall, men are being offered endless options, from antique replicas to the traditional boot cut and from fitted jeans that ride even lower on the hips to "baked" jeans, which are made in a process that ages the denim and gives it the feel of suede. And they are expected to pay for these option-loaded pants, which have an average price well above US$100.
The jazzing up of men's styles is partly aimed at overcoming three years of lackluster sales of men's jeans that have cut into the bottom line of companies as diverse as the Gap, Levi's, Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein.
Even as the men's market has stagnated, the flowering of new styles for women's jeans has propelled stellar growth. The number of men's jeans sold in the US stayed flat last year while sales of women's jeans increased 11.2 percent, according to NPDFashionworld, a market information company based in Port Washington, New York.
Indeed, this year women may buy more jeans than men for the first time since Levi Strauss & Co, the nation's oldest denim maker, has been keeping track. In all, the adult jeans market is a US$9.5 billion business in the US.
Now stores and manufacturers are trying to build on their success with women's jeans by also offering men the hottest new washes and cuts. Several of the fastest-growing brands in women's jeans, including Earl and Seven, will introduce men's jeans lines in the next several months.
Going upscale
"We feel there is a big gap in the better men's business," said Kurt Lester, vice president for merchandising for Earl jeans and its parent company, Nautica.
Like other makers of cutting-edge jeans, Lester says this is not a product just for rock stars and the young, fit and superchic. "We are not excluding anybody who wants the Earl look," he said. "We go up to size 40."
Not only new companies but also established jeans makers like Levi's and Polo Jeans, a division of Polo Ralph Lauren, have been revving up the men's fashion component in hopes of capturing a piece of the emerging high-end market. Polo introduced pants last fall that offered consumers denim with cross-hatching, herringbone stripes or elaborate finishes. Polo is also the company behind baked jeans.
Most men's jeans will not put the same premium on wild sexiness that some women's lines do, but they are venturing into new territory like very low-rise models designed with a tight fit and a waistband that rides several inches below the navel, a la Jim Morrison. Jeans makers also try to make a statement by using the highest-quality denim, which comes from Japan, and hand-sanding the denim around the knees or crotch.
In addition, they are offering the latest "washes" -- chemical processes that give the fabric unusual shades or textures.
"Regular guys are really getting into denim," said Bridget Russo, a spokeswoman for Diesel, an Italian company that has become a fashion leader in men's denim. "They can talk about it for days."
Diesel started selling jeans in the US in 1996, and last year it had sales of US$93 million here, roughly 60 percent from men. "It is like a status thing," Russo said. "Like cool limited-edition sneakers."
Still, men seem to have a limit to how stylish they want their jeans to be. Diesel, Russo said, has won a following among men 14 to 40 with innovative styles like Rabox, a low-waist jean with flared lower legs and an extended-tab waistband worn by guys who want to be like Brad Pitt, who owns a pair. But she says the company's most popular styles have straight legs and fancy washes that essentially amount to "a worn-in look."
The best part of high-technology jeans, from the perspective of manufacturers and retailers, is that consumers seem to be willing to pay up -- way up -- for them. Sales of jeans that cost US$75 or more nearly doubled in 2001, to reach about US$250 million, according to NPDFashionworld.
Building on a niche
Though the category still amounts to less than 3 percent of yearly adult jeans sales and is almost certainly driven by growth of expensive women's jeans, sellers of men's products say men are sure to follow. Men's jeans in Europe, where the current denim fashion started, have long sold in the three-figure price range.
"It is a whole new price point acceptance," said Ross Klein, senior vice president for corporate marketing for Polo Jeans. His company's jeans, he explained, typically sell for US$39 to US$49, but fashion jeans start at US$79 and go to US$130. "When we present real innovation, we have no problem selling through at the high prices," he said.
Those sales are being made not just at elite stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, but also at mid-price department stores like Macy's, Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom. "There is not any price resistance," said David Fischer, senior vice president at Bloomingdale's, a unit of Federated Department Stores. "After all," he contended, "US$100 or US$150 is not out of anyone's reach."
The next step will be to introduce fashionable men's jeans to a broader market by pricing them slightly lower than the high end but well above the mass market. At the end of 2000, Levi's introduced a Premium red tab line of jeans that are selling for US$85 to US$125 at high-end stores. Levi's sees this line as a way to skim the cream off the market and as a testing ground for somewhat less expensive models.
"We are taking the lesson on what sells at premium and quickly getting a version down to mass -- within six months for women and 12 months for men," said Jeff Beckman, a company spokesman. "This fall you are going to see Levi's low-rise at Sears and JC Penney's."
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