Forever In Blue Jeans

5 minute read

The Guardian is heralding the return of low-rise jeans. The New York Times has proclaimed that a high-waisted fit will define our post-pandemic wardrobes. Vogue, meanwhile, says it’s all about baggies for the next six months. At the same time, the original influencer Kate Moss has defied all of these expert predictions by sporting a pair of bootcut jeans to a fashion show last September.

When we’re young, fashion forecasts like these are the weather vanes of our wardrobes. We swing whichever way they do. But as a midlifer, I read these predictions with the same mild curiosity with which I scan the agony aunt column at the back of a Sunday supplement – it’s interesting but not really relevant to me. As much as I respect each of these publications, not one of them will influence which jeans I buy and wear, because at 47, I understand my denim personality, and it’s a Charlie’s Angels-inspired aesthetic: high-waisted with a wide-leg. I like a cropped flare on occasion too, and in summer I’ll throw a pair of boyish jeans into the mix because they evoke the kind of laid-back effortlessness I prefer warm-weather dressing to suggest.

In the noughties, I was very partial to a low-rise bootcut, á la Posh Spice. Between then and now, I’ve experimented with straight cuts and turn-ups, designer and distressed, but settled comfortably on the above options. I doubt any of the brilliant fashion commentators rounding up our denim options for the new year will be rushing to rethink their denim inventory either. From my experience, these women may deliver the latest trends, but they don’t necessarily embrace them. This is why they look so good. FT How To Spend It editor Jo Ellison, for instance, sticks largely to a mid-wash straight leg, and she always looks like a woman who knows what she’s about. Similarly, Vogue deputy editor Sarah Harris tends to revert to a mid-rise, straight leg, or boyfriend, time and again. Both women have a kind of settled-in style, which makes the same sort of statement as a Chanel handbag; it needs no explanation, it just works.

But I don’t mean to denigrate the notion of trends; to suggest that they’re the preserve of some cohort of less clued-in fashion outsiders. After all, what are trends other than exciting ideas that women can take or leave as they like? What I mean is that most seasoned experts – having worked in fashion for longer than a millennial has walked and talked – have tried and tested every denim cycle of the past three decades, and like most midlifers, have the sense of self to form their own sartorial allegiances and the confidence to carry them off whatever the fashion headlines say.

While this confusion of style options might perplex and panic a younger woman, who – like me when I was 20-something – just wants to be on point, for midlifers, the signage reads very differently.

For us, the array of denim options on offer is simply another reinforcement of what we already know: be who you are; dress how you please; there’s no right or wrong, just opinions.

I suspect the conversation around denim has been ramped up because our social lives are about to amp up with the lifting of restrictions. If we feared loungewear would become the new ready-to-wear, anecdotally the last few days suggests all evidence to the contrary. My local pub looked like Christmas Eve last Saturday night – plenty of sparkle and not a piece of fleece or stretch fabric in sight. For me, jeans are the concealer of my personal style; the item I reach for when I don’t want to go to too much effort, but I want to look pulled-together and presentable. They’re the sweet spot between lazy and dressy. They also have the promise of what Yves Saint Laurent described as, “expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity”. Identifying the best pair of jeans is as fulfilling as finding the right partner. In both cases, there’ll be times when you might question the choice and fit, but you wouldn’t be without them, and they’re always there when you need them.

Despite having found my own denim comfort zone, I still have an on-again-off-again relationship with jeans. Depending on the day, pulling on a pair can make me look as polished as Charlotte Tilbury’s Magic Away Liquid concealer, or they can leave me feeling the way a cheaper Rimmel alternative does – vulnerable and exposed.

Is it because jeans have traditionally been the marker of cool, of youth, and of sexiness that most of us can’t imagine our wardrobes without them?

To forgo wearing jeans is like accepting you’ll never wear anything other than Ecco shoes again. Think of all those campaigns in the eighties and nineties, which became cultural and historical touchpoints. From Brooke Shields and Kate Moss for Calvin Klein to Nick Kamen’s striptease in a midtown American launderette on behalf of super-brand Levi’s. For most Gen Xers, jeans have the same nostalgic appeal as brat pack movies and MT-USA.

Looking at the jeans I’ve bought over the years is the sartorial equivalent of reading back over my diary. Memories are sewn into every seam and rivet of each endlessly worn pair – from the 501s I brought on a school weekend away in Kerry in 1995 (they were my brother’s, but my mother serendipitously shrunk them in the wash) and a pair of Earl jeans an ex-boyfriend bought for me in a Notting Hill boutique in 2002, to some H&M flares I picked up on a mini-break in Vienna in the late noughties. They chart my emotional development as much as my sartorial journey. As a shy teenager I wanted the validity of that little red flag on the bum of my jeans; as a 20-something in London, I was confident enough for the logo-less, paired-back branding of a new wave of designer denim; and post-recession, I was assured enough to go back to my high street-buying roots and unearth a pair for just €30, which I still wear today.

I wonder if my denim buying days may be over now though. I have 30 pairs in my wardrobe after all. While this is nothing close to the 80-plus pairs Sarah Harris has confessed to owning, she wears denim 95% of the time, according to an interview with The Outnet, while I wear it about 20% of the time. Of the past 55 outfits I’ve posted on Instagram, only seven have featured jeans. The maths don’t add up do they? Something I wear relatively infrequently having such a special place in my wardrobe and psyche?

I suppose that’s the magic of denim. When they feel right, jeans are a more powerful form of dopamine dressing than any colour-saturated co-ord.