Consumer Reports' ShopSmart Magazine conducted a recent survey revealing that the average woman owns a total of seven pairs of jeans—only one in four women own more than ten—but of those seven pairs, only four actually get worn. We conducted our own informal NYC-based poll, only to yield some remarkably different results.
ShopSmart's survey went on to conclude that only one in 10 women is willing to spend more than $100 on a pair of jeans, while the average price they pay hovers at $34. Younger women in the 18-34 demographic hold a slightly higher average at $60 a pair, the poll noted.
Curious over these figures, we approached some fellow females to inquire about their denim habits. As is often the case in comparisons between New Yorkers and the rest of the country, our norms appear to be quite different.
The range of women we talked to between the ages of 25-34 also own more jeans than they wear, however a whopping 99% of this group owns 10 pairs of jeans or more, wearing anywhere between three and eight of them on a regular basis. Furthermore, 8 out of 10 of those interviewed not only spend over $100 when shopping for new jeans, but we'd also be willing to speculate—again these results are very unscientific—that the vast majority hasn't dropped less than $100 on a single pair in less than a decade (as $100-plus has been the going rate for premium denim for some time now).
What's most intriguing, however, are the patterns among women in how they shop for and subsequently, wear their jeans. We'd give it about a 60/40 split for the two reasons those extra pairs go unworn: they're either too-small, "aspirational" sizes, purchased with the intentions of wearing after an anticipated weight loss, or they simply don't happen to be in style at the moment. The common reason we continue to hold on to them? They were too expensive to justify tossing.
While the out-of-fashion jeans sometimes need just a little bit of time before their style comes back around, it's the too-small jeans that require some work—perhaps more mental than physical. Do we, as women, believe that tossing those "skinny" jeans means abandoning the possibility of losing that unwanted the weight? If so, one can't help but ponder the heavy symbolism we're attaching to that pile of blue collecting dust in the closet.
