Once You Notice What’s Wrong With These Jeans, You Can’t Unsee It

After a decade of jeans too tight to sit down in, too low-rise to bend over in, and too spangled to actually wash, the pendulum has swung hard in the other direction. These days, the comfier and less sexy, the better, and for the first time in a generation, pancake-butt mom jeans are cool again.

Consider these, then, the apotheosis of "denim." For its newest delivery of /Jean, rag & bone has gone so comfy and so unsexy, its jeans aren't even denim anymore. Take a closer look. What you're seeing is actually a digital print of beat-up, frayed, stained, ripped rag & bone men's spring '14 selvage denim, all transposed onto a terry cotton pant. Yep — that cuffing, those belt loops, all those holes, and that whiskering aren't real. Though, the elastic waistband you think you can kind of make out is 100% there.

Available now for pre-order, this jean is an SNL joke that's also kind of brilliant, and it leads us to think about how far trompe l'oeil in the name of comfort can go. A wedding dress printed on a muumuu? A business suit stamped on pajamas? Stilettos printed onto a fuzzy slipper? Not…no.