Antik Denim

A code that unlocks the secrets to sex, status and society is currently tattooed on the rear end of a 22-year-old woman near you. Not on her actual skin, mind you, but on her jeans.

For at a time when wages are stagnating and the economy is softening, women have decided -- for reasons known only to the fashion gods and their inner voices -- that it is time to splurge on denim. And so behold! The new era of the $200 pair of jeans.

Not just any jeans, mind you, but pants that have been ripped with screwdrivers, sanded with abrasives, washed with acid or beaten by stones. The more destroyed the denim, the better. So long as it has a fashion-forward loop of thread on the back pocket that signifies a chic and expensive brand, it doesn't matter that the pants are on their last legs. The tush code says that you are in the club -- and unafraid to spend two bills to put in your two cents.

These jeans are on display everywhere you look, if you know where to look -- and now you do. Check out the sports bar showing the NCAA tournament games near your office, or college campuses or any mall where moneyed kids congregate. According to Vera Van Ert, apparel analyst at brokerage Wedbush Morgan, high-fashion denim is the new "black pant." She means that women, who love the way soft new styles of Italian denim thread fit their gym-honed curves, are making once-lowly jeans a staple of their wardrobe.

Ask a girl why she decided to spend $200 or more per pair, though, and you get kind of a faraway look. Is it that most are made in the U.S., or have superior smoothness, or are cut specially to hide faults and accentuate the positives? Is it because some of the offerings are lovingly distressed -- even "destroyed," according to catalog descriptions -- by hand instead of by machine?

Few can offer a straight answer, which leads one to conclude that the urge to sashay into an elite circle hemmed with money is the untold answer.

'They Do Fit Really Well'

I only tripped on the concept when I expressed shock that my 19-year-old niece had bought a pair of $175 jeans -- and was coolly informed that that was nothing. Indeed, as I proceeded to research this story by scientifically asking women how much they paid for their jeans, the receptionist at my office copped to owning 20 pairs of jeans purchased for $150 to $300. Said a colleague at MSN Money: "After you've bought one pair at that price, the shock value kind of goes away. And they do fit really well."

As you might expect, I'm telling you this because there are several ways for those of us whose taste in jeans runs more to $35 Levi 501s to make some money off this mania. There are three public companies at the center of the action -- two of them tiny, Innovo Group (INNO:Nasdaq - commentary - research) and True Religion Apparel (TRLG:Nasdaq - commentary - research), and one medium-sized, Liz Claiborne (LIZ:NYSE - commentary - research). And after reporting good earnings in the past month, they all look like a good fit for traders with a taste for speculation.

Of course it's not just the women. For the first time since the early-80s heyday of Calvin Klein, Jordache and Guess? jeans, young men, too, have been swept into a public display of high-dollar denim. At my local high-end menswear shop, jeans ranged up to $400, and salespeople said they're selling as easily as a sweater or jacket of the same quality and price. The impulse may come from an evolution-wired compulsion to follow the herd. In the pages of all the celebrity mags, such as People and Us, young male and female stars alike these days are being snapped by the paparazzi wearing ripped-up $300 jeans from popular companies with new-age names like Citizens of Humanity and Seven for All Mankind. read more...