The NY Times recently ran an article, in the Thursday Fashion & Styles section on April 21st, examining and questioning the exorbitant rise in the price of jeans.

Excerpt below:

Since the advent a half decade ago of the jeans category termed “premium” or “luxury” denim, referring to trousers that cost $75 or more, the price of what were once quaintly known as dungarees has spiked so precipitously it is now in cloud-cuckooland. More curious still, blue jeans have suddenly shed their proud proletarian roots and turned into what retailers call a status buy.
…

There may have been a time when it was possible to consider oneself stylish in a pair of $100 jeans from, say, 7 For All Mankind, the label widely credited with helping ready the mass market for a new age in blue jeans. In cash register terms, at least, that time is gone. A stroll through the jeans bars that are now a ubiquitous element of the retail landscape has lately become a masochistic exercise in sticker shock.
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Far from being rarities, jeans with price tags of $200 are now everywhere, the retail equivalent of dandelions after spring rain. And it no exaggeration to say that a pair these days can easily cost as much as an iPod (Tsubi, $319), a Motorola Razr (Levi’s vintage, $325), or a desktop computer with the printer thrown in. (Nudie vegetable dye jeans, $428.)
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Some other obvious questions follow. What exactly are premium jeans? And why are they different from the millions of ordinary pairs sold all the time? How much of the premium denim phenomenon is hype and how much real value is there in obscure attributes like ring-spun denim, triple-needle stitching, bleach “whiskers,” or special treatments that abrade, distress and generally torture a pair of trousers until it has achieved just the right luxuriantly ratty patina of something that has been dragged behind a truck? It is exactly features like these that customers use to justify denim at $200 and up.
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“Right now you could have a pair of jeans that cost $1,000, and people would buy them,” Lawrence Scott, the owner of Pittsburgh Jeans Company, said last week. What, Mr. Scott was asked, is the indispensable element in the making of a perfect pair of luxury jeans?

“Same as always,” he said. “It’s going to come down to how your behind looks when you pour yourself into them. No matter how good the wash or the detail or the label, if it doesn’t look good on a behind, it won’t sell.”

That being said, a quick scan of the jeans rack (as of today, April 28th) at BIS produced the following:

• Chaiken – $35
• William B – $39
• Earnest – now $32
• Daryl K-189 (new with tags) – $49
• Theory – now $36
• J. Richmond – $60
• 7 For All Mankind – $50
• Citizens Of Humanity – $60
• Earl Jeans – a selection ranging from $20-$39
• Katayone – $39
• Emmanuel Ungaro – $31
• Diesel – $45
• LIX – $50
• Roberto Cavalli (blue denim with animal-print trim around the beltloops and bottom) – $150
• INTERMIX – now $36
• Kenzo – $60
• James – $60

… and more!

Tags: NY Times | Jeans | Denim | Couture | Consignment | Resale | Cavalli | Diesel | Intermix | 7 For All Mankind | Citizens Of Humanity |