What makes a great pair of jeans? Comfort’s important, sure, but we’ve all zipped ourselves into a high-waisted pair for the sake of fashion a few too many times to think that’s everything. Wearability and washability are good metrics, too. Can you wash these jeans without having some guy who rolls his own cigarette in Red Hook yell at you about putting them in the freezer to clean them instead? But for me, there’s only one sure sign of a pair of jeans’ greatness: receiving a compliment.
“Since when did you get vintage Levi’s without me?” is what I asked my older cousin, Ashley Veurink, when I saw her wearing the jeans. Ashley is a licensed esthetician in Kansas City and essentially my sister. She’s perfect, minus her single fault, which is an inability to buy vintage denim. We’ve discussed it at length, which was why I suspiciously accused her — and gave her my version of the highest compliment for jeans — last time she was visiting. “Dude,” she replied, “these are Target.”
There really might not be a better phrase than those three words. We’re both Midwesterners raised by practical parents and on babysitting money, so Target has always felt like a happy place of ours. Ashley told me that she’d found the jeans during a panicked 9 p.m. trip to the store the night before going to a friend’s bachelorette trip. She then proceeded to order several more washes of the jeans and pack them all for the trip, where she wore a pair to a New York Liberty game. After hearing Ashley’s tale, I immediately ordered the Target jeans for myself in four different sizes.
The jeans did not disappoint. They’re soft but not stretchy. In fact, they’re 100 percent cotton and mid rise — but as I discovered after ordering multiple sizes, you can size down for something high waisted or size way up to wear the jeans slung on your hips. And unlike ordering musty Levi’s on eBay (my personal hobby of choice), this sizing experiment can end in a neat return to your nearest Target.
Ashley and I can get each other revved up like only cousins can, so I knew it was time to bring in an outside voice to determine the true greatness of the jeans: my friend Danielle, who’s 5-foot-2 and incredibly discerning. Danielle tried the jeans and immediately saw the appeal, too: “They feel perfectly worn in, even on the first day of wear,” she told me. “I love the little bit of distressing; they can still be dressed up without feeling frumpy.”
I wore my Target jeans to a New York Fashion Week party, hoping someone might bestow upon me a prized good-jeans compliment. But crickets. Still, alongside Khaite and Agolde, my $35 Target jeans held their own. “These are Target,” I whispered to my friend, a chic fashion editor with tiny eyebrows and the best vintage-shopping recommendations in Milan. She smiled politely, fixing her patent-leather miniskirt while responding, “I’d never be able to tell.”
(note that these are currently only available for shipping in “dark wash.”)
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