Handmade denim jeans from Roy Stapler

Roy's Jeans - Video by Self Edge from Self Edge on Vimeo.

Adam Smith (economist) famously posited that a person, working alone, could make some small number of pins in a single day. If you had an individual person working on each step, they could make quite a lot more. Upwards of 4800 times more, depending on how you crunch his made-up numbers.

This guy is that one person, making one pair of jeans at a time, because that's what he likes to do. (Yes he cuts the fabric en masse - but still.) You can buy a pair yourself for $275, which is a princely sum for a pair of jeans, but competitively priced for premium denim. And, made by hand. One at a time. As long as you don't outgrow them, it's likely that you could wear them for a decade or more. It's possible that you can get that kind of wear out of a pair of Levi's, but not likely. Maybe an old pair. The new pairs are cheap shit and wear out just as fast as anything else.

Plenty of people spend $275 or more on a pair of jeans and don't think twice about it. I'm not saying that's good or bad; instead I'm suggesting that if you do, you should consider buying them from Roy, because he cares more about your jeans than you ever will.