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Let Them Wear Diesel Jeans
In the last great meltdown, there were soup lines. Now they’re lining up for premium denim. A New York Diary.
I’ve resided in New York City for fifty years, and I fancy myself a guy who gets around, but I’m regularly surprised by what I see in the streets. I guess this is one reason why I love living here—the scene is always changing, always in motion, and often in conflict with the version of events that the daily newspapers and TV broadcasts depicts as “reality.”
This morning at 7 o’clock on my way to work at my writer’s hideaway, I saw about three thousand people (ranging in age from eighteen to thirty-eight) lined up to buy jeans at a shop across from Bloomingdale’s called Diesel. Although that shop has been at the site for years, I’ve never gone into it, for what it sells I’d never buy; but today, when I walked past Diesel, the front door was flanked by security guards controlling the crowds who wanted to go inside and pay $50 for a pair of jeans.
I talked to many of these customers on line—there were single men, single women, with young children in carriages, young men with girl friends, people of all colors and all talking on cell phones, or listening to iPod music, or eating bagels and sipping coffee from cups…all waiting to get into this store to buy a pair of jeans for $50.
We read about the city in financial ruin, and yet, here on Lexington Avenue (Main Street) there are three-thousand people wanting to spend fifty dollars on another pair of jeans.
I thought to myself: We read about the city in financial ruin, we read the daily press with its dire prognostications about the collapse of our economy, we watched Charlie Rose on TV last night interviewing yet another numbed-out economist predicting doom and gloom, and lamenting the loss of trillions not only on Wall Street but on Main Street…and yet, yet, here on Lexington Avenue (Main Street) there are three thousand people wanting to spend fifty dollars on another pair of jeans! What gives? Should they be saving the fifty bucks, or putting it into Treasury Bills, or buying their out-of-work single-mom mother a new pair of shoes or a frozen dinner?
I asked a lot of these people on line questions like that; and all they said, in essence, is that the $50 jeans were bargains they could not resist. The security guard told me that these jeans (Italian made) usually sell for one-hundred or two-hundred more. Still, I thought, must these people on line spend fifty-bucks on something they can do without? Apparently not. Moreover, they told me, they’ll also get for their fifty bucks not only a pair of jeans, but also a free pass to tomorrow’s concert somewhere in Brooklyn where the featured performers include M.I.A. and the N.E.R.D.S or whoever…(people I know next to nothing about, but my forty-year-old son-in-law told me these performers are “huge.”)
But what does this say about the economy? This shop Diesel, before the day is done, will earn several thousands of dollars selling jeans, and yet we’re told by the media that the economy is tanking, nobody is buying anything, all shopkeepers are in foreclosure or are releasing their employees, etc. etc…
Again, when I spoke to many of these people on line, not one of them said they were hurting financially, most of them were employed, none claimed to be worried about a lack of health care, and all were unconcerned about the financial state of the city or the nation.
If we had conscription, half of these people would be in the army. But we don’t. And so they’re lined along Lexington, slowly moving toward the Diesel shop anticipating a new pair of jeans…
You explain.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
It's M.I.A. -- with dots. And Diesel was celebrating its 30th anniversary with the sale. Maybe the people in the lines didn't mention that? I find it funny that you are so surprised...have you bought a pair of Levi's jeans lately? What did you pay for those? You can get them marked down to $35 from $46 at an old-time favorite American retailer at the moment. Now, they might not be designer, but they are a whole whopping $15 cheaper.
Dear Mr. Talese,
"If you have only two loaves of bread, sell one and buy a hyacinth."
How long after "the last great meltdown"(I assume you mean the stock market crash of 1929), did it take for the bread lines to form? Since when , if a person still has the money, is it so ridiculous for them to line up for what they consider a bargain. And if buying a pair of fancy jeans (priced 50$ when they generally go for approx 100-200$) gives these people some pleasure, why not? Especially now!
If, as you seem to allude, this financial crisis might be transitory (i.e. completely different from 1929), and even if it isn't, people still need to have a little bit of fun, don't you agree?
I don't like finger pointing. And the first questions I have for you personally are: what is your dining out budget per month on average? And do you expect to significantly reduce that budget now that we have entered "the last great meltdown?" or should I ask: do you really need a "writer's hideaway." Maybe, in view of the current economy, you could just write from home?
Now I have a few things to say about Renzo Rosso, the founder of Diesel. He does have an enormous appetite. He does believe in free enterprise. Well, when his jeans brand became very trendy, he began upping the price. I remember thinking at the time, 'this is really a bit much.' Diesel began advertising in the top glossies, obviously the higher price of the jeans helped them do that. I thought it was pretty ridiculous that Diesel jeans began to retail over 100$, but that's just my opinion.So now Rosso has got the price down closer to where it should be if you respect a reasonable mark-up and that again is in my opinion. Perhaps this 50$ special was just a customer lure for a day. So let's take a look at Diesel's price in about a year and then we might have an accurate idea of just how much "meltdown" we've suffered.
But as for people buying something that costs a little bit more than it should because it makes them feel special, how can you moralize about that?
And I don't think you can blame a fashion brand for taking advantage of its cachet by upping the price.
And in any case you're barking up the wrong tree. With all your journalistic talents, why don't you take a penetrating look at the real culprits in this situation instead of poinbting your finger at a bunch people lined up at 7:00AM to buy a pair of jeans to show off with ?
And I take offence against your line about conscription. That little addition isn't even funny. In fact, it's a bit scary and pathetic. Don't you prefer people lining up for to buy overpriced jeans rather than shipping off to....At least there's some things we can be thankful for.
someone correct me if i'm wrong, but this reporting seems a bit shoddy to me. this story was published this morning, though the show referred to was on saturday night. though i didn't try to get tickets, I read that jeans did not have to be bought to acquire a ticket at specific store locations at specific times last week. which could go a long way in demystifying the picture painted by the reporter.
Part of it is simply our culture of wealth, where co-workers and college friends of mine complain about having to pinch pennies when they just bought a new Iphone and have cable with 200 channels. My dad often tells me (a wise man, one's father) that he doesn't mind helping us kids out when we're in a bind, but he doesn't want to find out that we are dropping $60-80 a month on cable if we're asking for $20 for an oil change.
But then, we're Dutch.
I survived for years in a large midwestern city on $12,000 a year. I also didn't have cable television, drove an older car (think older than my youngest sibling - 15 years), didn't eat out, and followed a strict grocery budget. The demographics that you see waiting in line for a $50 pair of jeans that they don't need are different from the people like myself, who mourn a little when milk prices jump again, and eggs go up 20 cents in one week.
Dear Gay Talese and blog-writers, --- Mr. Talese's key question is one that many of us share. Can we continue to respond to stressful modern life by shopping? "Consumerism," as the main idea for an economy, is especially baffling when so many of the world's potential consumers can't get food, clean water and a home. We have shanty-towns and foreclosure suicides right here in the United States. Consumerism seems surreally mean-spirited now. You remember how the rocker Bono actually proposed a regimen of shopping for t-shirts to solve the poverty of Africa? Luckily his idea flopped. Now at least we must face that difficult human issue and know that there is real work to do. This shopping system, with its sweatshop factories, emissions-intense shipping, advertising and packaging and chain stores and credit cards and waste... is finally collapsing. I appreciate that a person such as Gay Talese would notice where these stranded believers still stand in line, and notice also the painful irony of the timing of it, and ask for a public conversation about it.
Mr. Talese sees a contradiction where we should all see it - in the neighborhood where we live. My own feeling: We ought to kick out the chain stores and bring back the neighborhood shops that the Wall Street-financed Diesel stores kicked out. Amen?-- Reverend Billy
Poor Gay...sequestered there in New York. Here in L.A. Jeans are going for $300 a pair and up.
However, he knows that jeans don't take a capital letter. Caps are too expensive, I guess.
yeah i don't get it either - where i live, my store on main street(its actually called main street!) is closing after limping along for the past couple of years. I see lots of people walking instead of driving, and i am shocked at the price of food. i wouldn't dream of spending $50, much less $200 on a pair of jeans - i'm putting 3 kids through college so they won't start out in life in major debt.This one is voting for That One, BTW.
They say they are not hurting financially because their credit card debt has not yet bitten them on the butt. It will. When their debt to income ratio becomes too high, they will not be able to get a loan for anything, start to miss payments on those cards and maybe the mortgage and will have to cut up those jeans to use as firestarters because their gas has been shut off due to nonpayment. Hopefully they were visiting from Florida where the winters are more bearable. Here in Wisconsin it is more of a concern.
Slow motion train wreck.
But because we are all on it...
This America... all these Main / Lex Streets will be transformed in ways unimaginable right now, Mr. Talese. But you know that. You know you know that.
Nevertheless... so good to hear from you. Jeans on Lex and blinders on the peops. Got it. Thanks to you.
Stay in touch.
If one hung around at Château de Versailles in 1789, one might not notice that the starving masses lacking bread were also lacking cake. I guess it's nice that NYC offers so many regular surprises; however, Mr. Talese. maybe the precincts your frequent are limiting the range of your cultural experience? I suggest this with considerable trepidation, fearing that if you read this you will re-write my thoughts and express them so much better than I can that I'll have to sell all my pencils and live the rest of my life a mute.
Or maybe they needed a new pair of jeans. I do!
hahaha!
old man, they are just the people who thinking about career.
and now you ought to recognizing your age to this sh*t era. where those people thinking and acting on the f*ck*ng new brand of sh*th that they call "career"
Thank you.
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