Target Aims to be a Jean Genie, Joins the Denim Fray

Denim shopping is an activity that can easily reduce a woman to tears. Many women – and probably some men, too – have tasted the agony of trying on pair after pair of jeans, only to give up, demoralized and committed to a new exercise regime.

Clothing companies, recognizing this frustration, have recently been competing to offer the most enjoyable, least infuriating jeans shopping experience, some even offering the opportunity to do the whole thing online, in the privacy of one’s own home, with Zappos-style user-friendly return policies a key sweetener in the home clothes shopping deal.

Enter: Target, the most recent company to join the denim fray. Having recruited Marie Claire magazine’s Nina Garcia, of Project Runway fame, to help women find their perfect pair of jeans, Target is using its signature style-for-the-masses approach to make an aggressive move.

In the video above, the Marie Claire fashion director talks three women through the shopping process, highlighting Target’s Jeanius, a “New Fit System” that features six new styles – designed to flatter the tallest, smallest, curviest and “semi-curviest” of women.

Target, strategically, prompted the three women to talk about their different body types, their hips and curves, rather than presenting the jeans on a series of stick-thin models to whom very few women in the world can relate, à la the Gap.

Target is not alone. Competition in the female-friendlier jeans space is getting stiff. Levi’s also recently relaunched its women’s denim sizing under the Curve ID banner.

But branding may make a difference here. Clearly hoping to drum up female camaraderie, Target has asked women to share their methods for trying on jeans on the company’s Facebook page. With Levi’s competing for young, hip dollars in recent campaigns, Target may have an opening to build on its core segment: down-to-earth, budget-stressed women who want to look and feel good.