I’d say if you need to tailor your jeans beyond adjusting the leg length, then you should seek a different model.

Personally I am not very picky about brands. I’ve got Levi’s, Lee, Wrangler, Uniqlo and all the way down to Lidl’s “Livergy” house brand. They’re all fine for the purpose of rugged, good looking pants. Fit is king with all of them.

Will some pricy Japanese brand raw jeans let you develop wear to your liking and mold to your body? Sure, and they will maybe last a very long time. But I’m not breaking regular jeans either so I don’t feel the need to spend that kind of money.

You need to ask your tailor to elaborate on what he meant. Maybe your pants are twill weave rather than denim and that’s it. There’s no “real gold denim standard” and we’re all just guessing what your tailor could’ve meant here

It seems like you just want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth and not buying some scam. I think for bang for buck Wrangler 13MWZ Rigid is unbeatable as it’s $30 in the USA (stupid high marin in EU though). This model in particular seems to fit your needs as I read about people just buying a new exact same pair after a few years. So you can just decide on thrm and keep buying the same unchanged cut.

You can get used Levi’s 501 on Vinted if you’re in Europe as an alternative to overpriced 13MWZ in EU.

You have a tailor but won’t buy nice jeans??

Anyway, if you want to go down a rabbit hole there is some interesting history regarding the height and decline of the denim industry. Apparently some niche Japanese companies used to specialize in it, you might still find a few cottage specialists.

The world of denim jeans is a super deep rabbit hole: fabric composition, fabric weight, the type of loom the fabric is made on, real indigo dye vs chemical dyes, etc., etc. But the vast, vast majority of the jeans you’ll find in most stores these days aren’t particularly high quality at all. They’re rarely even 100% cotton anymore. Now most brands use a blend of cotton, nylon, and spandex. Where once they were made to be tough and durable work clothes, now they’re mostly just made to feel comfortable immediately off the rack, not to last or be durable really at all. The fact that they wear out super fast just means they get to sell more jeans.

And you can’t even count on any of the major denim makers to have consistent quality across their own brands anymore. Levi’s, Wrangler, etc., make different quality jeans to hit the specific price points of the different major retail chains. A pair of Levi’s you find at WalMart will be lower quality than the pair you find at Target, which will be lower quality than the Levi’s you’ll find at a higher end department or western wear store.

If you want 100% cotton jeans that are made like jeans were made before the 1990s, the terms you want to search for are “raw denim,” and “selvage denim.” Selvage refers to they type of loom the fabric is made on rather than the fabric itself, but denim made on a selvage loom is usually the high quality stuff. Raw denim can get pretty pricey depending on the brand. The cheapest option will probably be Levi’s 501 Shrink-to-Fit jeans (not any old 501s, mind you. Specifically the Shrink-to-Fit ones). Some of the other less expensive raw denim options are brands like Brave Star or Unbranded, which run in the $100 - $200 range. Brands like 3sixteen and Naked & Famous are usually in the $200 - $400 range. And brands like Samurai or Oni are like $300 on up.

Depends on what you’re looking for. There are multiple types of denim even though they are all denim. By and large Japan has the best denim ij the world. Naked and famous is thr most cost effective way to get Japanese denim state side.

Wrangler 100% cotton denim jeans apre perfectly fine. Just wear what you feel good in.

I used to get jeans from gustin, no clue if they are still good, but had good stuff like a decade ago…

I know they aren’t crazy expensive but I wear Levi jeans. For non denim I wear only gramicci shorts and pants