ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two examples of the phenomenon of buying time, that of distressed jeans and the trade in antiques and flea markets. These case studies bring out a central paradox of the process of buying time which is the inherent tension between personalization and the impersonal. The authors conclude by attempting to explain this paradox through reference to Levi-Strauss’s image of rituals such as rhythms and routines as machines for the suppression of time. This personal relationship to jeans is clearly what commerce has attempted to replicate and then pre-empt through the phenomenon of distressing. Even if this is starting to spread to a few other garments, it clearly developed as a direct response to this unique relationship to denim. The author would think unwittingly these premium labels, which are all about adding value, evoke the place of jeans as something which links what otherwise might have seemed incommensurable, the extremes of the personal and the impersonal.
