Thursday, August 16, 2007

before the denim sea change



remember when there were only a few denim options?
jordache. lee. gloria vanderbilt. guess. levi's.

i bought this pair freshman year of college for $3 at a secondhand shop in a faded mini strip mall. that wasn't very long ago, i know, but for most of my life i only wore levi's from sears. as a baby, osh kosh overalls. i had a single pair of acid wash guess jeans with zippered ankle openings, which were unbelievably uncomfortable. my husband wore these levi's for a year or two, ripped the knee open, and then they were forgotten. since then, i've graduated from levi's to the gap and lucky brand, and then seven for all mankind, built by wendy, farmer industry, habitual, a.p.c., and now earnest sewn. i have this vision in my head of the ideal dungarees. i've been watching old jacques cousteau programs, and i love the long, rangy look of everyone in their circa 70s jeans. medium rise, tight on top, wider on bottom, structured yet slouchy, insouciant. i'm not exactly built like a boy, so boy jeans will never hang just so. does anyone know of a denim designer who can do this? the earnest sewn keatons come close, but i'm still looking for the perfect pair.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes shopping for jeans is so difficult (even shopping for running shoes)...I have no choice but to steal my boyfriend's jeans. Very intereesting blog by the way.
delphine

Anonymous said...

I remember that jean shop, down by the Pho shop "on the wrong side of the tracks". I got an great pair of jeans there. Unfortunately they were in my backpack when it was stolen from the ceramics building while I was in the back mixing clay.

marga

nanashi said...

I agree that the best jeans are the ones stolen from boyfriends (I am still eyeing his highschool levis with a hole in the backpocket, and he still tells me about that traumatic moment when his mom washed his jeans). I also went from Gap, Guess, Calvin Klein (oh the Kate Moss ad days), then discovered Seven, Earl Jean (it started as a remake of men's levis for this company), paper denim, Joe's, Blue Cult, Habitual (I still think they got the best cuts, it has remained my to-go-to jeans for the past few years amazingly), some super-faded and baggy denim from Nicolas Chris in Australia and then the perfectly narrow cut Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair denim from Sweden (yes I tried the skinny denim), and well...now I have been working on starting from scratch just like my boyfriend, buying a raw denim from Jeanshop in Chelsea and wearing it almost everyday, adoring the way it breaks in over time...the fades are all genuinely mine..I think this is fun, too, not ready made but made on own (although Jeanshop designer is a former Ralph Lauren guy so he knows how to cut a mean straight leg jean). just a long, thought on denim...

erica said...

i should check out jeanshop next time i'm in the city. i love my apc raw denim hipsters, but i'm the first to admit that they aren't the most flattering to my thighs. i should have bought the 28s instead of the 27s, maybe that's my problem!
thanks for the tip, i, too, am obsessed with denim (the old fashioned kind, not the bedazzled kind...).