RetroCurves

Jeanology- a fall from grace

I have been on the quest for the perfect pair of denim for the past decade. I had a pair of Bill Blass jeans that lasted for 10 years, but they recently ripped and went to Denim Heaven ( where only the most worthy of jeans go).  They were perfect- right amount of stretch, nice medium dark wash, slighest bit of flare and they sat at my natural waist ( no  backyard vertical smile in these jeans). I have been looking for a pair to replicate this denim experience for a long time- even before the other pair gave out from exhaustion. Where have all of the good jeans gone? Now they are all skinny jeans, low rise jeans, jeans you have to pour yourself into, or just paint on.  Whatever happened to just  a regular pair of broken- in ,soft denim, dress’em up, dress ‘em down jeans?  Now they are so stylized you need more than one pair to do any job efficiently:  Jeans to go out? Check. Jeans to stay in? Check? Jeans to lounge? check? Work jeans? Check.  Club jeans? Check. 

I miss the kinds of jeans that used to forgive, the kind that used to mold to you. The kind of jeans that waited for you to make them your own- they weren’t sitting there on the hanger- hostile, snooty- telling you who they were and who YOU needed to be in order to wear them.  The jeans of old would embrace you like an old friend, they knew your comfort spots, they knew your secrets and they would never tell. The new jeans are harsh. They are cold, cruel, and can not wait to expose even your tiniest flaws to the world, because in their minds you don’t deserve them anyway.  They are made for the people on billboards and the folks on screens big and small now - and they know it. Flashing those perfectly toned asses all over town, jeans so skin tight skivvys need not apply -indeed, they are still a worker’s jeans. The work, however, is very different than what was in the blue-collar scope of the imagination in 1873.