My $30 and $10 Bluenotes jeans

[mendel]

Back a while in the Recent Purchases thread I mentioned that I'd picked up a couple of pairs of OK jeans at Bluenotes on sale for $30 and $10 (

), and someone asked me to post about 'em, so here they are. My favorite of the two were the $10 pair. They look a bit loose on the ground but that's just because "slim" on me is "loose" on most of you

It's more of a classic straight-leg fit. The denim's washed but is still pretty dark, other than the second pair below they're the darkest jeans I have. They're no APCs but they're turning into one of my favorite pairs. Click thumbnails for detail: I'm pretty sure the $30 pair are raw or one-wash denim. There's definitely no distressing at all. The denim's a bit on the light side. They're ostensibly the same fit as the first pair, but I'm a 35" waist, and while the 34s in the first pair fit the 34s in these seemed too tight so I grabbed the 36. Now that I've worn them a bit I wish I'd grabbed the 34s in both, they've stretched out a bit and are a bit looser than I'd have liked now. Ah well. I don't expect these to wear in amazingly since they're so light, but they're great for kicking around in when I want that clean raw look. All in all not bad for $40 Canadian total, especially in a town where there's really no sweet spot for dark, un(der)-distressed denim between 501s and Nudies.

 

[Jared]

My little brother, who's not old enough for premium jeans, was looking for jeans over Boxing Month, and after going to seemingly every store in town, he also settled on some Bluenotes. I'm sure the construction is crap, but I agree with you that the styling is good value. That being said: you Easterns at least have H&Ms within driving distance, so you have no excuse for not wearing Sliqs if not APCs.

 

[mendel]

Originally Posted by Jared

My little brother, who's not old enough for premium jeans, was looking for jeans over Boxing Month, and after going to seemingly every store in town, he also settled on some Bluenotes. I'm sure the construction is crap, but I agree with you that the styling is good value.

Yeah, I don't expect much out of them but they're at least on the right track to what I want, where my last couple of jeans purchases were either just plain bad ideas (BR pair which I liked in the store but can't stand now -- they're ever-so-slightly distressed and it looks so fake) or disappointments (Club Monaco pair which fit great, nice and dark, and then disintegrated before their first wash, at least they were on sale). I only recently sort of clicked on the kind of look I was after -- I needed to dress up casual and dress down work a bit but it took me a while to figure that out -- so buying cheap while I figure out what works and what doesn't helps.

They seem put together as well as, say, Gap -- so nothing special, but not outright crap either. There are a couple of weird bits -- the back pockets of the $10 pair are two panels, with the stitching in the centre not just there for decoration, and there's only a single row of chainstitching along the outseam in both, with both pieces of fabric chainstitched together instead of separately. It's the anti-selvage!

That being said: you Easterns at least have H&Ms within driving distance, so you have no excuse for not wearing Sliqs if not APCs.

I head up to Montreal occasionally, and went once expressly to check out H&M and Zara, but I don't shop very well under time pressure like that. I need to see something on one day and go back a couple days later to check it out again before I'll buy it. Now that I'm starting to get my basics built back up again it might work out better, though.

Part of the problem is that in Montreal I tend to check out the high-end stuff you can't even find here, but I rarely want to buy the high-end, so it all just ends up window-shopping. I need to go down and hit H&M and Zara again, and then look at places like Simons and up St Laurent and St Denis instead of Holts and Ogilvy and Les Ailes.