The New York Times Magazine had a great series of very questionably important articles about product design this Sunday. One of the articles that I found especially interesting is by Austin Bunn, called Not Fade Away.
Mr. Bunn, whose name is appropriate to an article about well-worn jeans, shows how the vintage jean market took shape (it was the Japanese that got it rolling) and how it has crested. He speaks with a few genuinely unique individuals who make jeans that look like you worked on the docks, in the farms, or at the factory for folks like me who work in front of a back-lit screen. Ironically, or not, the jeans pictured in this article online look way more worn (or vintaged) than they do in the printed version.