Blue Cult

Today, it's common for a pair of everyday jeans to cost about $150. In fact, it's almost expected.

Fashion experts call it a jeans "explosion" -- with high-end jeans, such as Diesel, Seven for All Mankind, Juicy, Blue Cult Jeans and Citizens of Humanity, growing in popularity and sales.

Premium jeans represent only a sliver of the $5.5 billion a year women's jeans market, but by focusing on custom fits and washes, luxury-jeans manufacturers are charging wine-and-theater-ticket prices for their picnic-and-football-game products.

And women have become more and more willing to pay.

Premium-jeans manufacturers say the high cost is justified, because of the time and attention put into each pair.

The biggest factor in the high cost is often the look of the jeans, which comes from various washes or finishes -- stone-washing, chemical washing, sand-blasting, baking, whiskering. Many high-end jeans makers hand-distress or hand-vintage their clothes.

Paper Denim and Cloth jeans, for example -- which can run between $158 and $180 -- are hand sewn, the pockets are hand-set and shaped differently for different sizes, and each pair is hand-finished for that naturally worn look, and then numbered.

For Blue Cult jeans, the hand-sanding, whiskering and "vintaging" process takes about 15 to 20 minutes for each pair.

By Tanika White
The Baltimore Sun

STAR-TELEGRAM/RON JENKINS FASHION