nowadays, i've not only become accustomed to jeans, but i've noticed that no more supposed "universal and basic item" can be so divisive and full of nuance. the color, length, style, and brand of jean can say so much about a person.
knee deep
my jeans history. my first two pairs of jeans were purchased together at the local abercrombie in michigan. this represents a huge buy. i was introduced to jeans and abercrombie at the exact same time. while my relationship with that putrid place stopped there, it was just the beginning of my jean journey. this initial foray into the jean world was a dismal failure. the jeans were a nice color but totally tapered. not 80s style tapered but tapered nonetheless -- i had no idea what the hell cuffing was, i didn't miss out on much apparently. i didn't even know that tapered jeans weren't cool by any, and every, standard, i just wore them when it got chilly. that first year, i tried to wear shorts until the last possible moment -- thanksgiving -- but eventually had to give them up.
babbs also has a great story about moving to michigan with tapered jeans. apparently us san diego transplants were all lost in jeans fashion together. hell, hong's jeans are still highly suspect.bigger is better
luckily, i met a few friends from new york and they quickly introduced me to jnco's. you remember jnco's don't you? i don't think they were ever that hot in southern california, but apparently in new york (and the bay area) they were the jean of choice. at this time, i was also introduced to the idea of "leg openings." jeans were now three dimensional -- waist size, length, leg opening width.
the trend toward bigger and wider pipe leg jeans was just starting to pick up and jeans were advertised with "26-inches" on the sale ticket, as if buying bigger would compensate for smaller. just like exhaust or rims for a muscle car. prevailing to a man's insecurities sure worked because i immediately bought a pair -- for $50, a true fortune and a big ticket item in those days. hell, who am i kidding, $50 is a big ticket item for me still, ten years later.
those jnco's lasted me for years. even when i was too old to wear them, even when they were way past their prime (the style as well as the physical condition of the pants), i stuck to them. they were too light colored in retrospect but i didn't know any better.
the main reason i loved those jeans was not for the soon to be "raver look" but because those jeans allowed me to wear really thick sweats tucked underneath them. see, i hated skin on jean during the winter. my solution was to wear sweat pants (usually a really ugly green pair) underneath my pants at all times. only big jeans or snowpants were conducive to this effort. the main problem with those jnco's was that once it got snowy or rainy, they swept up everything as i walked. leaves, grass, dirt, water, squirrels, probably an underclassman or two were all stuck into and soaked into my jeans. disgusting. on the plus side, my jeans were good shelter in case of housing emergencies.
azure blue
near the tail end of college and post-jnco's, i went through a non-jean phase. yes, i experimented, but i did not inhale. i tried khakis, i tried cargos, i tried pinstripse and polyester. i tried those pants that could zip off into shorts. i tried it all in an effort to escape the jean. blue pants, black pants, green pants, charcoal pants, light colored pants. all of them failed me. cargo pants worked for awhile, but tell me when was the last time you saw somebody wear cargo pants successfully? exactly.
i returned to the jean. 32x30, purchased (always) at anchor blue. this was my secret source of jeans for many years. for under $30, you could purchase a nice jean in a variety of colors and styles -- mine was "beyond baggy." the black and dark denim versions became my nice jeans; the lighter and faded versions were designated casual wear. i experimented with smaller leg openings but decided that anything smaller than 20-inches just made me look funny. i had found my wardrobe home and along with my commitment to camo shorts and white shirts, i added the anchor blue jean for winter wear.
clear skies
recently, i discovered that i'd committed too soon. my jean was not 32x30 and beyond baggy. my jeans never hung correctly on me (lack of an ass will do that) and the bottoms still tended to be a tad wide and sweep the back of my heel as i walk. this resulted in my jeans acquired fraying at the bottoms. i couldn't figure out what was wrong. i figured that was just my style, but i knew, deep down, that i was missing something about the wearing of jeans.
i figured out what that was. after much pondering and analysis of other people's jeans -- i may have stared at male posterior views once or twice or a billion times -- i've discovered that i wear my jeans too short and too wide. too short because i was always concerned about fraying my jeans. too wide because well, i'm not that big. so i'm on the hunt again for my jeans, my ideal jeans.
the real key here is to wear big enough shoes so that despite your jeans being too long for your frame, they sit and sag nicely on the shoe. this i discovered once i started my collection (some say uniform) of jeans and converse shell toes. this is why skate shoes are so damn chunky. i'd always preferred the slim profile of chuck taylors but with heftier shoes, the sag and collection of the jean can be made above the shoe line, instead of dragging around on the ground. get it?
so in summation, the five factors of jean shopping are: length, cut(style), pipe dimension, color, and price.
for the record, james and lilly's friend punny once engaged in a "jean off." take turns naming brands of jeans. james was pretty damn good for a guy. then again, do we revoke his guy status for knowing a few too many brands? very impressive indeed mr(s) wang.
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