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# In search of perfect jeans
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/in-search-of-perfect-jeans/
- Published: 2008-07-26T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:24:20.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Promenade, #archive-import

*By Mariel Howsepian West Dressed*

LAST WEEK, LEVI STRAUSS & CO. announced that it would stop manufacturing different cuts of its signature 501’s, and start selling a one-cut-fits-all across the globe.

Imagine a young, curvy Brazilian woman peeling off her 501’s and handing them to a 50 year-old Japanese businessman. She puts on his suit. He puts on her jeans.

It’s very Kum Ba Yah. It’s very “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.”

Imagine all the people, wearing just one cut. The “global fit” jeans have yet to hit the stores, but on Tuesday, I went to the Levi’s store at the Third Street Promenade to try on a pair of good ol’ fashioned 501’s.

It had been a year since I last subjected myself to the nightmare of tugging on pair after pair of jeans in search of something unattainable: Nirvana in denim. I wanted a length that brushed the top of my shoe. Nothing high-waisted. Nothing pleated or tapered. Nothing too light. None of that designer-fading on the butt.

And no whiskering around the crotch. Who came up with that? Look at my crotch. Doesn’t it remind you of a cat? What’s another word for cat?

Every pair I tried on revealed derriere décolletage. Was this a design flaw of the jeans, or a design flaw of me?

Why couldn’t I just find a pair of jeans that were so comfortable that I would forget I was wearing them? Jeans that would make me feel naked. Jeans made by the fake tailors in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

I would have to settle. Terribly disappointing. The only option was to buy myself a heavy-duty sewing machine, a bolt of dark indigo denim, light some candles and channel the spirit of Levi Strauss.

During the gold rush, Strauss arrived in San Francisco to sell fabric to miners so that they could make tents. The fabric was serge, a strong cloth, from Nimes, a town in the south of France. Serge de Nimes. The name was shortened to denim.

Strauss heard miners complaining that their britches weren’t strong enough. He was only 24 years old when he came up with the idea to take his denim and make it into pants. A global fit, for miners of all races. Red and yellow, black and white… On Tuesday, an employee at the Levi’s store helped me carry eight pairs of jeans back to the dressing room. The jeans were different cuts of the same size: Hi Rise Flares, Mid Rise Straights, Mid Rise Boots, Ultra Low Boots, Ultra Low Skinnies, Low Skinnies, Vintage 70’s Flares, and, of course, 501’s.

In addition to what was available in the store, I looked online. There are Swanks, Slouch Straights, and Super Lows, not to mention cuts like Relaxed and Perfectly Slimming.

It was vertigo-inducing. The shades of blue swirled around me: Stonewash, Sky, Twilight, Ocean, Blue Wave, Blue Rail, Arctic Blue, Junction, West Coast, Metro, Rodeo, Road Trip, Dusty Road.

The dressing room was my-own-personal-hell hot. “How are things going in there?” asked an employee.

“Fine,” I said, doing the squat-test in the first pair of jeans. “It’s really warm.”

“Yeah, it’s the lighting.” Part of the problem women have when trying on jeans is that we each want to be a certain size, and we want the size to be small. Though the size is printed in a place where no one else can see it, we define ourselves by that secret number.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was really more like 20 minutes, I carried a pair of 534’s to the register. I was actually happy about buying them. I was not going home empty-handed. I was victorious … until an employee told me Levi’s would soon be discontinuing my almost-perfect cut.

MARIEL HOWSEPIAN digs black coffee, fairy tales and a man in coveralls. She lives in Santa Monica and

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 26, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/072608.pdf?ref=smdp.com)