Bargain Alert: Cheap Jeans from Lands' End Canvas

I thought I was done buying jeans for a while, but lately several of them have been feeling a little loose in the waist. This makes no sense, as I have not been on a diet or anything; in fact, given the time of year, I would have thought it much more likely to have put on a few pounds during the winter, resulting in my jeans fitting a little snug.

A couple of them were a little big in the waist to begin with, and I'd hoped to accomplish a small amount of shrinkage through laundering, but it hasn't happened. Lands' End Canvas is currently having a spring sale, and their jeans are on sale for $29, which is about 40% off their normal price. Yesterday we went to the mall because I wanted to try them on in the store to see how they fit before ordering. To my surprise, the jeans were 60% off at the store.

I tend to forget that Lands' End's retail presence in Sears stores frequently has sales and promotions separate from those on the web site/catalog, and vice versa. Also, sometimes the discount offers I receive via email are valid only in one or the other; sometimes they are valid on regular LE merchandise but not Canvas, or vice versa. You really have to read the fine print carefully, which is frankly annoying.

I've moved toward slimmer-fitting jeans the past couple of years, but it isn't always easy to find jeans that are cut slimmer but aren't low-rise. (For the longer of torso, it matters for sitting comfort and shirts staying tucked in.) The Canvas "straight fit" jeans are somewhat trimmer than jeans from the regular LE line. They also offer them in a slim fit that's a bit too slim for me, but might work for others.

The tradeoff for getting a higher discount at a store is that the store I went to was only carrying three of the colors/washes available, whereas the web site has seven. I went with the basic, unmolested "rinsed indigo" finish, though I was hoping to find something closer to a medium indigo blue to wear during non-work times. But $20 was too good a price to resist, and since I now know how these jeans fit, I will probably order another pair in a lighter finish from the web.

The fabric is reasonably substantial and feels like pretty standard denim weight (I'm not going to geek out on ounces per square yard, because I don't know it and I'm not that much of a denim freak); I suspect they will need a couple of washings to soften a bit. Because these are dark, unfaded denim, there was a label attached about the dye that suggested washing them before wearing and washing them separately (which to me means "only with other jeans") to avoid dye transfer.

There was other Canvas merchandise at 60% off; this probably varies by store. (Yesterday I was at Northshore Mall in Peabody, MA, but in my opinion the men's Canvas section at the Sears in the Burlington Mall is somewhat larger and better-stocked.) There was also a clearance rack marked $6.99 which had mostly shirts in size small, but who knows what you may find at your local store?