Jeans!!!
I LOVE Jeans.
As with a lot of things in life I came kind late into the jeans game. Mom, being the classically minded sort, tended to dress us in slacks. (BTW, the sound of the words “slacks” has always made me shudder…”slacks”…uhhhh...) One outfit particularly burned into my memory consisted of a pair of grey slacks, with a baby pink and white stripe button-down shirt that had a whale cross-stitched over the breast pocket. I’m sure I was rockin’ a pair Kangaroos with that get-up too… HOT. Oh…2nd grade awkwardness…
I am not sure exactly when I started wearing jeans. I assume it was somewhere around 4th grade. When, as my family was about to be transferred overseas, my brother and I were treated to a shopping spree of American clothes. It was the first time I remember actually actively choosing my wardrobe. A formative moment indeed.
Over the years I fell victim to myriad jean trends. In middle school my jeans were slim with a zipper and denim bow at the bottom, In Jr. High I longed for (though never acquired!) a pair of tapered acid washed Guess jeans with that triangle logo on the ass, In High school I tight rolled… until that became passé and I went baggy, oversized and flared for the grunge 90’s. The new millennium and grad school re-discovered my waistline thanks to blessed low-rise and boot-cut. Lately, thanks to the cyclical nature of fashion, those skinny jeans have worked their way back into my closet, co-existing happily with their ever flattering boot-cut sisters.
Anyone who knows me is aware that I wear jeans pretty much all the time. They totally fit with my lifestyle. My job, as glamorous as it may seem from the outside, is actually a lot of grunt work…from hauling huge bags of clothes or sitting on the floor of a dirty warehouse to fake-hem someone’s pants or tie their shoes. It is not unusual to see me on a shoot with a leg covered in pieces of double-stick tape and labels pulled off of garments, Giant safety pins piercing front pockets to be within easy reach and a hanger with the next outfit dangling from a rear belt loop. Suffice it to say I like pants that can work…
And that is the beauty of the Jean! I challenge you to name one other garment that is as versatile and varied or works harder than the Jean. You can dress them up or down, Spend $20 or $200, wear them with sneakers or stilettos, find them in a never-ending combination of cuts and fits, washes, wears and colors, and they only get better with time!! And how is it that Denim blue mysteriously goes with every other color?
I was inspired to ramble on about my love of jeans because of a certain amount of jean trauma I’ve been going through lately. Those of you following the saga of my injured knee may recall that a favorite pair of Jeans (perfect deep-but-not-too-dark wash, boot-cut but not flared, with cool double waist-band, that also somehow made my white-girl butt look totally perky!) were mercilessly cut off of my body in order to put my leg back together in the emergency room. Now I vaguely remember yelling at the doctor who sweetly was trying to save my jeans by pulling them over my contorted leg something along the line of “Just cut them off!! I don’t &#%@ing care!! Stop hurting me!!!” However, I do wish I had my wits about me enough to suggest that perhaps she only cut them to mid-thigh so that I might at least retain a pair of shorts after the ordeal. Instead she sliced straight up to the top, through that fancy waistband. Which, FYI, made them quite difficult to wear home from the hospital!! I am still considering Frankensteining them back to together, we’ll see how that goes. So, anyway, that is one pair down. After about 6 weeks the swelling in my knee had reduced enough to wear my other favorite pair… People’s Liberation with both a star and a swan on the pockets (rad!), they look great with sandals, converse and cowboy boots, perfectly soft and broken-in…So perfectly soft and broken-in that they started to disintegrate while on my body. There is nothing like bending over to picking something up, to realize that everyone can suddenly see your cute polka-dot undies. I have dutifully mended those suckers so many times the butt is now more Zig-zag stitch than twill weave…another pair bites the dust.
I may love jeans, but I don’t have a trillion pairs. I usually have 4 or 5 good pairs that I wear til they die. So with my 2 best pairs out of commission and the rest all barely knee appropriate skinnies , I was starting to go into a panic. Jeanless!!! I didn’t know what to do without my wardrobe crutch … I was wearing shorts on cold days, dresses when I wasn’t really in the mood, I kept digging thru my stacks of pants looking for a new pair to have materialized overnight. I have just now finally become independently mobile enough to go shopping on my own, so a new workhorse pair of jeans went straight to the top of my shopping list.
And that is when I happened to find myself on the receiving end of some seriously good Wardrobe Karma.
Yesterday, I went to visit a friend and client to drop off some clothes I had picked up for her. She told me she was in the midst of cleaning her closet and was purging all the jeans that no longer fit. Suddenly , in a burst of inspiration, she produced a pair from the top shelf she thought I would like. “These should fit you!” she said excitedly. And you know what? They did!! Perfectly! They are a beautiful medium blue, with a little distressing, low rise, straight legs. Wonderfully casual go-with-everything jeans…delivered to me as if by magic in my moment of need.
Last night, I tried them on again in the privacy of my own home. Slipping them on, the relief of being properly re-jeaned was palpable. I laughed, I cheered, I got chills, I did a happy dance in front if the mirror bad knee and all. “Jeans!!! “ I cried, “Jeans!!!” I promise this is true, although ridiculous… I was even surprised of my reaction, that a simple pair of pants could create such ecstasy. But, that my friends… at least in my world, is the power of jeans….
XO
-Becca
As with a lot of things in life I came kind late into the jeans game. Mom, being the classically minded sort, tended to dress us in slacks. (BTW, the sound of the words “slacks” has always made me shudder…”slacks”…uhhhh...) One outfit particularly burned into my memory consisted of a pair of grey slacks, with a baby pink and white stripe button-down shirt that had a whale cross-stitched over the breast pocket. I’m sure I was rockin’ a pair Kangaroos with that get-up too… HOT. Oh…2nd grade awkwardness…
I am not sure exactly when I started wearing jeans. I assume it was somewhere around 4th grade. When, as my family was about to be transferred overseas, my brother and I were treated to a shopping spree of American clothes. It was the first time I remember actually actively choosing my wardrobe. A formative moment indeed.
Over the years I fell victim to myriad jean trends. In middle school my jeans were slim with a zipper and denim bow at the bottom, In Jr. High I longed for (though never acquired!) a pair of tapered acid washed Guess jeans with that triangle logo on the ass, In High school I tight rolled… until that became passé and I went baggy, oversized and flared for the grunge 90’s. The new millennium and grad school re-discovered my waistline thanks to blessed low-rise and boot-cut. Lately, thanks to the cyclical nature of fashion, those skinny jeans have worked their way back into my closet, co-existing happily with their ever flattering boot-cut sisters.
Anyone who knows me is aware that I wear jeans pretty much all the time. They totally fit with my lifestyle. My job, as glamorous as it may seem from the outside, is actually a lot of grunt work…from hauling huge bags of clothes or sitting on the floor of a dirty warehouse to fake-hem someone’s pants or tie their shoes. It is not unusual to see me on a shoot with a leg covered in pieces of double-stick tape and labels pulled off of garments, Giant safety pins piercing front pockets to be within easy reach and a hanger with the next outfit dangling from a rear belt loop. Suffice it to say I like pants that can work…
And that is the beauty of the Jean! I challenge you to name one other garment that is as versatile and varied or works harder than the Jean. You can dress them up or down, Spend $20 or $200, wear them with sneakers or stilettos, find them in a never-ending combination of cuts and fits, washes, wears and colors, and they only get better with time!! And how is it that Denim blue mysteriously goes with every other color?
I was inspired to ramble on about my love of jeans because of a certain amount of jean trauma I’ve been going through lately. Those of you following the saga of my injured knee may recall that a favorite pair of Jeans (perfect deep-but-not-too-dark wash, boot-cut but not flared, with cool double waist-band, that also somehow made my white-girl butt look totally perky!) were mercilessly cut off of my body in order to put my leg back together in the emergency room. Now I vaguely remember yelling at the doctor who sweetly was trying to save my jeans by pulling them over my contorted leg something along the line of “Just cut them off!! I don’t &#%@ing care!! Stop hurting me!!!” However, I do wish I had my wits about me enough to suggest that perhaps she only cut them to mid-thigh so that I might at least retain a pair of shorts after the ordeal. Instead she sliced straight up to the top, through that fancy waistband. Which, FYI, made them quite difficult to wear home from the hospital!! I am still considering Frankensteining them back to together, we’ll see how that goes. So, anyway, that is one pair down. After about 6 weeks the swelling in my knee had reduced enough to wear my other favorite pair… People’s Liberation with both a star and a swan on the pockets (rad!), they look great with sandals, converse and cowboy boots, perfectly soft and broken-in…So perfectly soft and broken-in that they started to disintegrate while on my body. There is nothing like bending over to picking something up, to realize that everyone can suddenly see your cute polka-dot undies. I have dutifully mended those suckers so many times the butt is now more Zig-zag stitch than twill weave…another pair bites the dust.
I may love jeans, but I don’t have a trillion pairs. I usually have 4 or 5 good pairs that I wear til they die. So with my 2 best pairs out of commission and the rest all barely knee appropriate skinnies , I was starting to go into a panic. Jeanless!!! I didn’t know what to do without my wardrobe crutch … I was wearing shorts on cold days, dresses when I wasn’t really in the mood, I kept digging thru my stacks of pants looking for a new pair to have materialized overnight. I have just now finally become independently mobile enough to go shopping on my own, so a new workhorse pair of jeans went straight to the top of my shopping list.
And that is when I happened to find myself on the receiving end of some seriously good Wardrobe Karma.
Yesterday, I went to visit a friend and client to drop off some clothes I had picked up for her. She told me she was in the midst of cleaning her closet and was purging all the jeans that no longer fit. Suddenly , in a burst of inspiration, she produced a pair from the top shelf she thought I would like. “These should fit you!” she said excitedly. And you know what? They did!! Perfectly! They are a beautiful medium blue, with a little distressing, low rise, straight legs. Wonderfully casual go-with-everything jeans…delivered to me as if by magic in my moment of need.
Last night, I tried them on again in the privacy of my own home. Slipping them on, the relief of being properly re-jeaned was palpable. I laughed, I cheered, I got chills, I did a happy dance in front if the mirror bad knee and all. “Jeans!!! “ I cried, “Jeans!!!” I promise this is true, although ridiculous… I was even surprised of my reaction, that a simple pair of pants could create such ecstasy. But, that my friends… at least in my world, is the power of jeans….
XO
-Becca
I love jeans the best of all my clothes. And if I can drop a few more pounds all my favorites will fit again. Sigh. I love you jeans...
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