All of the brand's jeans feature a slight amount of stretch, making them comfortable without taking away from the look and feel of classic denim styles. And unlike most brands producing jeans today, Mott and Bow still uses certain artisan techniques like hand-scraping for distressed looks.
That might just sound like a fancy way of making stretch denim, but Revtown's unique design allows for its denim to look and feel like true denim, not pants that are more or less sweatpants that look like jeans.
While most people will appreciate Revtown's performance denim for its casual comfort benefits, they're also great for professionals that regularly wear and need durable jeans (carpenters, heating and cooling specialists, mechanics, etc.) The brand even designed Work Jeans specifically for those types of professions.
As one of our favorite places to buy all kinds of high-quality wardrobe basics, Everlane's jeans check off many boxes for consumers. They're affordable, sustainably made, come in a wide range of sizes, and are quality tested to ensure longevity.
All of Everlane's jeans are ethically sourced with organic cotton and made at Saitex, the world's cleanest denim factory. The brand is incredibly transparent about how its jeans are made and what it's done to make them as eco-friendly as possible. You can learn about the process here.
While all of Everlane's denim is high quality, jeans in the Uniform collection are especially notable because they come with a 365-day guarantee. If they rip, wear out, or fade, you can send them back for a replacement pair.
In addition to being sustainable, Frank and Oak's simple designs and affordable prices make it appealing to most customers. Starting at $99.50, you won't have to break the bank for a nice pair of jeans.
Not only is Levi's the most recognizable jeans brand with its signature pocket stitching and red tag, but it's also the most sustainable. The WellThread collection uses rain-fed Cottonized Hemp, Water
Founded in 1999, Ksubi (pronounced sue-bee) is an Australian fashion brand with a grungy streetwear flare. The brand originally set out to fill the void for better-fitting skinny jeans and has become a favorite among celebrities, especially in hip-hop.
Although there are more affordable denim options, Todd Snyder still offers good value. If you don't mind spending $158 to $268 on jeans and don't care much about trendy designer pairs, you'll appreciate everything about Todd Snyder's choices.
Raw denim isn't for everyone. The cost can seem as stiff as the jeans when you first put them on. Naked & Famous Denim, a Canadian brand launched by Brandon Svarc in 2008, may convert you. It only uses top-quality Japanese denim and sews its jeans in Canada. While most luxury denim brands charge $200 and up for jeans, you can get a pair of Naked and Famous for about $150 because it doesn't do washes or distressing and doesn't advertise or have paid celebrity endorsements.
Naked and Famous jeans are also sustainably made. Since the denim is raw, there's no need for rinsing and distressing techniques that use a lot of water. Additionally, both Japan and Canada have high environmental and labor standards.
While known for its wild creations, like glow-in-the-dark denim and raspberry scratch-n-sniff jeans, the brand's core essentials are what keep its customers coming back, like the Left-Hand Twill Selvedge. It's made from Japanese left-hand twill denim, which is softer (once it's worn in) than the industry standard. The jeans are dark blue with contrasting gold stitching and are made from a midweight 13.75-ounce denim, which is comfortable for all-year-round wear depending on the climate.
While most jeans come in standard waist and inseam sizes, Sene Air Jeans are custom-made to measure. Using a 15-question Smart Fit Quiz, Sene quickly gathers information about your body like height, weight, build, midsection, shoulder posture, and seat. Although your upper body measurements aren't used to create your jeans, you'll have them on file to shop Sene's other items including custom suits.
If ordering custom jeans online makes you apprehensive, there's no need to worry. Personally, I found the custom measurements to be accurate, but should you have any issues with fit, Sene offers unlimited alterations and remakes.
Dearborn Denim is an outlier. It's a U.S.-based company that manufactures jeans in its Chicago factory and sells them for less than $70. It also launched a less expensive version under $40 that sold out of the first run almost immediately. Don't worry, they're back in stock now.
Robert McMillan, a former bond trader, started the company in 2016 looking to help revitalize American apparel manufacturing, believing it is "a great industry for steady and fulfilling employment for many people," he told me in an email. He credits Dearborn's efficient production and supply chain and no outsourcing for being able to sell quality, American-made jeans at reasonable prices while giving the workers fair wages and good benefits.
As mentioned above, Dearborn released 100% cotton jeans called SVR that, like the company's other products, are made in Chicago. The Tailored Fit jeans run true to size, have a medium rise, and have a slight taper from knee to ankle. These zip-fly jeans come in a dark rinse, which is a stunning midnight blue. They are comfortable from the get-go and are a great value at $39. Dearborn can sell the jeans at this price by not including things like rivets, which are pretty much just decorative anyway. You end up with solid, American-made jeans.
To evaluate the quality, fit, and comfort of a wide variety of jeans, I researched hundreds of models online, and I tested 30 in person (I wear a size 31 waist by 30 length). I also assembled a panel of diverse and stylish men to test the jeans, including Neil Berrett, co-founder of Standard & Strange (who wears a size 34 waist by 32 length); Wirecutter privacy and security editor Thorin Klosowski (who wears jeans in a size 29 waist by 30 length, and who put your digital data concerns on the back burner to test 11 pairs of jeans); Chubstr founding editor Bruce Sturgell (who wears a size 44 waist by 30 length); and This Fits blogger Aliotsy Andrianarivo (who wears a size 33 waist by 28 length). Together we selected a well-loved and comfy pair of slim jeans with a classic American vibe, a stretchier pair of denim jeans in the widest variety of sizes, a flattering pair of straight slim jeans affordable enough to stock up on, and (my personal favorite) a heavyweight pair of jeans with a button fly. I also tested selvedge jeans and made a few personal recommendations.
We try to keep our links up to date, but retailers may experience stock issues, and jeans companies tend to cycle similar versions of the same items under different names. If your size is unavailable through one of our links, try looking for another pair in the same cut with similar materials, which should be close to what we recommend.
How it feels: Well constructed and with a flattering cut, these close-fitting jeans offer the teensiest bit of stretch to make an already-comfortable pair of pants even more comfortable.
Though the other jeans we tested were made from 98% or 99% cotton, the Bonobos Premium Stretch Denim Jeans are made from 94% cotton, 5% polyester, and 1% elastane. That lower percentage of cotton is why the Bonobos jeans are especially comfortable and well equipped to handle a wider range of body types; cotton has less give than both polyester and elastane.
The Ford jeans were solidly constructed with tight and neat stitching. All of our testers agreed the jeans were extremely comfortable. And these jeans feature an easy elastic recovery that we expect will help them keep their shape and last for a long time. They shrank about 4 inches total in all dimensions after washing and drying.
The Ford jeans are made of 14-ounce denim (a measure of how much a square yard of the fabric weighs), which is the sort of thick and heavyweight fabric usually used on hard-wearing raw denim jeans. But in this case, the inclusion of a small amount of spandex makes the Buck Masons much more comfortable the first time you put them on, compared with raw denim.
How it feels: Though notably heavy, the Unbranded Brand UB101 Skinny Fit 14.5 oz Indigo Selvedge Denim jeans felt especially comfortable and durable after I broke them in for a month. A short fly made them trickier to button and unbutton quickly.
The Unbranded Brand jeans I tested were 14.5 ounces (common for midweight denim, but heavier than anything else we tested), and I found them and their rope-dried indigo exterior quite substantial and stiff at first. Breaking them in felt unnatural, like I was working against nature. Slowly but surely, though, the jeans began to give. After a few weeks, I started to look forward to putting them on.
Folks have also complained that the buttons and belt loops on the Unbranded Brand jeans may pop and fray within the first couple of years. And we noticed a couple of loose stitches, but nothing worrisome.
Shrinkage: We measured the dimensions of each pair of jeans, and then we washed and dried them, noting any shrinking that occurred. None of the pairs we recommended shrank notably, but it was an issue with some that we dismissed.
Look: I was determined to make some aesthetic decisions about each pair of jeans I tested. Was a pair of jeans awkwardly loose around the crotch? Did another pair of jeans have a retro-wavy design on its back pockets that had me spiraling about the summer of 2011?
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