Can you justify spending $1,100 on jeans?

The jeans were the colour of the Mediterranean in September, of a star sapphire, of your true love’s eyes. The fit was right too: spacious through the leg without being baggy, just enough rise. The quality of the construction was obvious, the cloth supple and sturdy simultaneously.

I walked out of the changing room and told the salesperson I would take them. I didn’t even check the price; I was ready to pay up for perfect jeans. “Great,” he said, just as I looked at the tag.

$1,100.

Reader, this is how far I have fallen: I thought about it.

But I didn’t buy them. The sum is within the limit in my credit card, but far outside of what I could explain to myself, much less to my 13-year-old daughter, who is quick to ask what I paid when I show off a new purchase and has an excellent nose for lies. Once you tell your children that you have paid $1,100 for jeans, the right to lecture your offspring about the value of money — that most time-honoured and pleasurable prerogative of fatherhood — is forfeit.

And yet. How much time do we spend in jeans? Is any price too high, if they make you feel like Robert Redford? How much longer might a pair from 45R — the ultra high-quality Japanese brand, whose New York store was the site of my brush with insanity — last than a pair of Levi’s? These had been soaked for two weeks in natural indigo, the salesman explained a little guiltily, as he put my pair neatly back into the display. We all pay for pleasure, in any number of forms. Who is to say, categorically, how much is too much?

I have spent more than $1,100 on a suit. I have paid, without flinching, over $700 for shoes and may do so again (those Alden long-wings in black cordovan, $846; my heart goes pitter-pat!). I’ve paid $750 for a winter coat (it was on sale!) at Paul Stuart. For some reason, though, I can excuse those purchases. Coats and shoes, properly cared for, do last a long time. Suits are really two items, not one, so you can divide the price by two.

Even legitimate pleasure can tip over into self-indulgence and selfishness

Desperate style addicts, struggling to silence the little voice telling them that they have a problem, have an excuse at hand. “Buy quality, buy once,” they say, “It’s an investment piece.” Nice try; it won’t do. Yes, you are probably saving money over a lifetime when you go from the $100 cashmere sweater to the $400 one, if you shop carefully and care for your clothes. Similarly, the difference between an $800 department store suit and what you can buy for $1,600 is immense. But multiply those higher prices by two again and you are not getting twice the quality. Not even close.

No one has ever economised by buying the very best. People who talk about how they have worn their Savile Row suits for 30 years have a closet full of them and rotate. Everything that is worn wears out.

There are two reasons to buy really good clothes: because they look fantastic, and to show how rich you are, either in money or in culture. Of course, the second reason (which may get a hold of us all at one time or another) is contemptible. But it is wrong to reduce the desire to dress beautifully to a demonstration of status. Dressing well is an art and pastime, and its critics are nothing but cretins and reverse snobs. Good food, good music, good design, the visual arts, sport — all of these things cost money, in one way or another. We should all share more of our superfluities with those who lack necessities. But sorting our pleasures into the shallow and vain on one hand and the deep and sophisticated on the other is, for the most part, an empty and ugly exercise.

That said, even legitimate pleasure can tip over into self-indulgence and selfishness. I cannot justify $1,100 jeans or, say, a $9,000 Kiton sports jacket. Simply not having the money makes the decision easy. But more to the point, I could not justify these things even if I had the dough.

There are harder cases. I dream of an Anderson & Sheppard suit, at $6,000, a $600 Charvet shirt, and John Lofgren motorcycle boots, at $1,200. I might enjoy them enough. Or maybe they are just gross. There is such a thing as too much. I just don’t know where to draw the line.

Robert Armstrong is the FT’s US financial commentator

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