PRPS Jeans

[Antionette]

are prps jeans somehow related to antik denim?

[harrypothead]

no, u r thinking of Akademiks.

heres an online brief i found

Prps Jeans

By the 1950's, Paul Fussell suggested in his book ''Uniforms,'' wearing blue jeans ''became one of the pop styles of anti-fashion.'' And thus, unavoidably, jeans promptly became ''just as much a uniform as the dark suit.'' Since then, fashion types have tried to liberate denim from bourgeois casual-Friday uniformity; a current attempt comes from the growing swarm of ''premium'' and ''superpremium'' jeans.

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Illustration by Clementine Hope


Forum: Fashion and Style
Donwan Harrell, a founder of the clothing brand Akademiks, is a denim fanatic and can go on in some detail about his newest project, a premium denim line called Prps, which includes jeans that cost $250 to $400 a pair. The brand's target buyer is not the person who rejects fashion but the denim supersnob: the type who studies interior stitching and other things that no one else notices. The production run for Prps jeans is quite small, and they are available only in men's sizes, although there will be nine new styles for the fall. Prps is sold in boutiques and a few high-end department stores and is equal parts reaction to and example of the present denim frenzy.

Earlier iterations of the high-end jeans idea were mostly about slapping an established designer's name (Calvin Klein, etc.) onto the back pocket. Tim Bess, who covers men's wear for the Doneger Group, a fashion consulting firm, says the contemporary fancy-jeans consumer wants something different. The premium hits -- True Religion, G-Star and 7 for All Mankind -- made ''detailing more important than the actual logo,'' he says. On the other hand, he notes, their success ''has a lot to do with the back pocket,'' since the designs are recognizable to those in the know. And, really, isn't a distinct pocket the same thing as a logo?

Still, one of the core principles of premium jeans is the inherent quality of the garment. And Harrell offered me a detailed chart to demonstrate exactly why his jeans cost so much. For starters, mass-market jeans are made in China, and many premium rivals are made in California, but Prps are manufactured in Japan. So what? Well, the Japanese manufacturer uses Levi's looms from the 1960's. These are less efficient than more modern looms but produce a fabric with a stronger edge. Along with a cutting process that wastes a lot of material, this helps to drive up the cost of fabric per jean to $30 (compared with $5.25 in China).

The cloth-making process, Harrell says, was inspired by the denim worn by actual workers before jeans became middle-class leisure wear. So were the details that seem to be the most crucial component of premium denim: the flaws. The process of making denim look 2, 5 or even 20 years old is touted by some jeans makers in long-winded tags that seem designed to ''educate'' the consumer -- like a pair of Paper Denim & Cloth jeans explaining that ''individually applied hand abrasion and scraping,'' among other things, were inflicted on the denim for an ''average processing time'' of 6.4 hours. Harrell has studied his own worn-out jeans and the ones worn by mechanics he deals with while drag-racing to guide the production of holes, fading and even the occasional ''organic'' greasy smear. This process, he says, pushes production costs to $95 a pair.

Chinese and American-made jeans (produced for $19.20 and $43 a pair in Harrell's estimation) introduce flaws with far less care, he argues, pointing to creases and marks in various rival denims that are ''not realistic.'' Only by faithfully replicating the damage caused by physical work can the haute-couture demands of dedicated denim connoisseurs be satisfied.

Bess, the men's-wear consultant, suspects that high-end denim is poised for a shakeout, with the likes of Old Navy imitating premium tropes that will probably satisfy people who aren't experts (that is, the overwhelming majority of the shopping public). Harrell intends to keep Prps premium and rare. Interestingly, he makes no claim that a pair of Prps might actually last longer than other jeans. But while denim fanatics may like the idea of a stronger fabric, the reality is that they will move onto new styles long before actual durability becomes an issue. For them, settling for anything less than the latest premium breakthrough would be like being out of uniform.

[lucie lee]

prps is not real japanese jeans they are psuedo-japanese