"It now appears... that jeans savaged by wild animals are a trend in designer sportswear."

"A Japanese denim brand had the bright idea, at least for raising its profile, of sewing indigo-dyed cotton fabric around rimless tires, sausage-shaped bolsters, and fat rubber balls, and throwing the objects to the inmates of the Kamine Zoo, in Hitachi City. In an accompanying video, the beasts bound from their cages and fall upon their novel chew toys with such relish that you have to wonder if there isn’t a little catnip involved.... When the fabric has been properly “distressed”—i.e., mauled—it is retrieved from the enclosures and made into trousers that are sold under the label Zoo Jeans. (The Japanese are avid consumers of premium denim, the funkier the better. The national obsession with jeans started during the postwar occupation, when teen-agers became smitten with the dungarees worn by their conquerors.) But, 'rather than simply being a marketing gimmick, there is actually value in this from an animal welfare perspective,' the article explains. 'Involving lions and the zoo’s other large carnivores'—tigers and bears—'in the activity is part of what’s called environmental enrichment....'"

From "The Global Business of Sartorial Slumming" by Judith Thurman in The New Yorker.