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Fashionable Jeans For Curvy Women Take Off

Tummy Tuck jeans, produced by a company called Not Your Daughter's Jeans, and targeted to aging boomers with curves, are cutting a swath at Nordstrom, Dillard's, Macy's, Bloomingdales and 1,000 specialty stores, where they retail for $88 a pair. Made with panels that reinforce the tummy and stretch fabric that gives in the thighs, sales are expected to rise to $40 million this year after hitting $7 million in 2006. Garment industry veteran George Rudes and two of his daughters founded the company after one of them tried on an ill-fitting pair of fashionable jeans in the Barneys New York store in Beverly Hills a few years ago. "The jeans weren't made for someone 40 years old," says Lisa Rudes Sandel. Tummy Tuck jeans are made in the United States from denim fabric imported from China. This allows the company to satisfy retailers that want up-to-the-minute fashion and quick changes, Rudes says, which is not as easy with product shipped from overseas. Tummy Tuck jeans could be threatened by competitors producing a reinforced jean of their own, however. "You cannot patent a clothing design," says Ilse Metchek, head of the California Fashion Association, an industry group.

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