The end is nigh. How do we know? A retailer has begun selling $425 jeans that come smeared in dirt and sadly, no, we’re not joking. It may be a clever marketing scheme, perhaps. But a joke? We should be so lucky.
They’re called “Barracuda Straight Leg Jeans” and they surfaced on the Nordstrom website — made by the New York based luxury denim brand called PRPS, whose motto is, “Bruised never broken.” Below an image of the deluxe denim is the following description, “Heavily distressed medium-blue denim jeans in a comfortable straight-leg fit embody rugged, Americana workwear that’s seen some hard-working action with a crackled, caked-on muddy coating that shows you’re not afraid to get down and dirty.”
Where do we even start? This has to be the straw that takes these lunatics from bruised to broken. Do you know what it means when a pair of jeans comes pre-smeared in mud? It means there is a person on Earth SO desperate to convince you they work hard, in the dirt, but SO unwilling to actually touch any dirt at all, that they’ll spend $425 trying to convince you! What kind of Patrick Bateman, upper echelon BS is that?
Reviewers are having endless fun mocking the jeans.
“I love that I can now fake a work ethic! Can I get one with fake oil stains? I want to pretend to be a car guy!” said one single-star reviewer.
“These are perhaps the best jeans I’ve ever owned. Perfectly match my stick on callouses,” said another. This comment, at first, is great and so silly, but then you realize, if these jeans exist, stick-on callouses probably do too and maybe this person exists! They gave a 5-star review!
We just have so many questions. What happens when people realize precisely how afraid of getting down and dirty you are? Are there people in this world who live lies as elaborate as these, every second of every day? How? When and where does it end? What if someone asks you what you’ve been doing all day? Do you just make something up?
And yet, ever has it been in the world of fashion: the style of the working-stiff, co-opted by couture; the “urban look” poached by preppies. We know one person who would approve:
