The Breakdown: What makes a pair of ripped jeans good?

Breaking down the items we call “wardrobe basics” to better understand what makes them good

Hi, how’s it going? How was your week last week? I (accidentally) peed in my denim cut-offs while walking home on Tuesday night, thus formally knighting them the world’s least effective denim diapers:

Which is only tangentially related to the topic at hand — ripped jeans, from an issue of The Breakdown, a subscriber-only series I launched last month wher…