Brand New You

Man's search for meaning and blue jeans

My late ex-husband and I never talked about clothes—not mine, not his—except for once, when he told me, with obvious pain, that his parents never let him buy Levis or even Wrangler jeans, insisting that they were too expensive. They said he would have to make do with JC Penney’s house brand. I think the cost difference between Levis and the JC Penney jeans was only a few dollars, but they wouldn’t budge. It was the principle: They believed that buying the brand name, even when it was a small difference in price, was hubris, indulgence. Humble people bought the house brand.

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash