Silly Monkey

I've been getting catalogs from Bonobos lately. If you don't know, Bonobos is a men's clothing brand that started up a few years ago, promising to offer better-fitting pants. I believe they have succeeded, if you are under 35 or have a very athletic build.

Since then they have expanded their product line considerably, now offering a wide selection of dress and business casual shirts, suit separates, pants in a less trim fit, jeans, outerwear, and plenty of shoes and accessories. They seem to be aiming to position themselves as a one-stop shopping solution for men who want to step up their wardrobe without expending too much effort. Okay, fine. I admit that I am somewhat turned off by this approach, but I am an exception with regard to shopping. I haven't paid much attention to what Bonobos was doing because I felt that, as with many other brands' offerings, I have aged out of the target market.

That's not all. They opened a store on Newbury Street a while ago (last year, I think), but as with all their other brick-and-mortar locations, you can't actually buy anything there. It's what they call a "guideshop," where you can try on items, get advice, and then place an order for what you want. (Isn't that what Dell did back in the "Dude" days?) I don't know, I guess it eliminates having to keep a substantial inventory on hand, but this just seems needlessly complicated to me considering you can order from their website with free shipping and free returns and try on your purchases in the comfort of your home.

They got a fair bit of style-blog coverage a couple of years back when they launched a collection of American-made jeans priced at $125. I'm sure that seems like a lot to some of you, but compared to what else was available at the time, it was a reasonably impressive effort.

(You might remember that I wrote a while back about Lands' End's American-made jeans for $95, and suggested you use one of their plentiful coupon codes; those jeans have since been marked down to an eye-opening $55, and LE is currently offering an extra 30% off one item, which would bring them to less then $40! As of now all sizes are still available in both washes.)

But back to Bonobos. (Have I mentioned that I think that's a really stupid name for a clothing line?) I got a catalog a couple of days ago. I decided to give it a quick glance before putting it into the recycling container, and found these "weekday warrior" non-iron cotton pants:

That's right, the days of the week are embroidered into the inner waistband. Five colors, five work days. (I am highly disappointed because the catalog has a group shot of all five that I wanted to show you, but I can't get my scanner to work at the moment.) I guess it's just a goof. I mean, I hope so. I really do.

By the way, these cost $98 a pair, so if you really want to outfit yourself for the whole work week with day-labeled pants from Bonobos, it will set you back just under $500, which seems pretty silly to me.

Update: after some further fiddling, my printer decided it would scan to a flash drive but still not to my desktop, but I now have the image I originally wanted to share: