Jeans

Ok, so the last post was about suits. Today I went looking for new jeans from Salo (yes, I know, I could've picked a better town for this...) and it turns out that getting jeans is incredibly difficult. You can't just go in and tell them that "I want a size 152 dark grey suit with slight pinstripes in a slim cut, side vents, two buttons and notched lapels". Or I guess you could, but they'd be lost. Or I'd have to learn the jeans jargon.

Anyway, after 15 minutes I got sort of desperate and decided to just go to the next store and just take something that didn't have holes in the pockets (see? I'm quite an easy customer after all). So now I bought some random jeans that didn't have holes in the pockets. The entire purchasing process was also quite interesting. When I came into the store the girl started asking what brand I wanted. Brand is a completely secondary thing, in my opinion. Especially considering that they weren't even selling any especially prestigious brands. I'm sure they make a decent buck with the inflated prices, but this itself is an interesting case, as I some blokes from the Boston Consulting Group were giving a lecture a while back and they talked about the trend of trading up. Trading up is essentially the phenomenon of people focusing on some things that are important to them and shelling out the bucks to buy the premium product (or brand) and then scaling down in something else to make up for the dent. This in turn leads to the top, high-end brands and the bottom low-cost suppliers to lead the way and leaving the guys in the middle to deal with a slow and painful death.

Secondly, who the hell actually wears the jeans that they sell these days? I mean, there's only a marginal group of jeans from the catalog that you could actually wear to work. And what is it with the ultra-slimness? This iteration of the ultra-slim trend in clothing has been going on for a year or two now, wouldn't it be time to ditch it once and for all and banish it for all eternity? Ultra-slimness in clothes is not in any way aesthetic - not in suits, not in jeans. Period.

Looks like this is turning into a rant and I could go blasting away at a lot of stuff, but I think instead I'll just stop now...