My life in jeans

Janet Carr

January 29

I love jeans. If I could choose, I would wear jeans every single day. Jeans and t shirts with boots are what I have always loved wearing. It sounds boring, but I usually have quite a few options in rotation.

Because of my job, I have to dress formally for work. I normally wear black trousers and white or neutral shirts with loafers or brogues. Off-duty though, it is jeans most of the year and dresses in summer (which is very short in Sweden).

I was early for an appointment the other day and saw a new preloved store had opened near my meeting venue. It looked like a pop-up so I popped in. Turns out some of the items were from movie and film set archives. The rest were NOS (new old stock) of vintage blue jeans.

I spotted some really 'out there' seventies jeans. I am not sure if they were newly produced or vintage because these labels had been replaced by the label of the production company.

As I was looking through the racks, I heard squeals outside the door. Four teenage girls came running in to look at the Lois bellbottoms. They were closely followed by four more, all very excited.

I asked one of them to take a photo of me with these jeans. She was so happy to comply. I told them I used to wear things like this when I was their age. They probably thought I was the age of Methuselah

It felt strange to me that they loved all the vintage jeans because those things have NO stretch in them. I remember

lying on the floor with a coat hanger through the zipper pull to get my jeans closed. I would then spend the night at a disco feeling like I was being cut in two, and avoid sitting down
lying in a bath of cold water getting my 'shrink-to-fit' jeans to shrink to fit me.

I also had these gigantic flares

and these wide Gap jeans

Lee Riders

I then started with Levi 501s

Sometimes I tried grey, or hipsters

And now I tend to wear slim fit skinny or flared jeans. As long as they are not flappy in the thighs I am fine. I like denim that is quite dark and thick, with good stretch. I prefer high waists these days. I have two faded blue pairs (one flared one skinny), two dark blue pairs (one flared one skinny), and this pair that has faded to mid-blue and is straight legged.