#YouLookNice in JEANS

As part of EOTB Jeans Week, iBeheld reminisces about buying and  wearing jeans in the 80s, and offers some handy tips that might help you to look in the mirror and say to yourself “Don’t #YouLookNice in your good pair of jeans!”

You should:-

Never listen to anyone’s negative opinion if you’ve found a style that you like and feel comfortable in. But if you have never found a style you like, then classic jeans such as Nancy describes here are worth trying again, because when they work they really work.

Play around with waist size and inside leg measurements.

In London in the 80s, we used to buy Levi’s in Camden Market: second-hand ones all heaped up in a great big mess on a table. You couldn’t be too fussy about size: I worked out that back then, when I was 5’4″ with a 24″ waist and a 35″ hip, I’d look adorably waif-like in anything up to a 33″ waist, cinched in with a belt and with the  hems rolled, chopped or cuffed as required. 

Learn how to make your jeans last.

Those second-hand Levis were about a tenner a pair back in 1988 (roughly a quarter of a week’s rent for my share of a 2 bedroom flat on Camden Road, so not cheap), and they’d already been worn in. The trick was to find a pair that would last. The key to making them last was not washing them. 

Good jeans were never designed to be washed on the regular: they were made for manual labour, riding horses, wrestling steer, holding up steam trains,  participating in bar-room brawls, and any other sort of all-round rough and tumble you can think of. You can do an awful lot in denim jeans before they actually get properly dirty. If you’re the dainty type that washes everything after one wear, think of the environment and step away from the soap flakes, for the sake of all of us.

But of course you can wash jeans, so don’t be squeamish about trying and buying second-hand ones – they’re much cheaper and so you can mess about experimenting with different brands, weights and cuts until you find exactly what you like.

Button flies are way more fun than zips.

I have a vague memory that back when I was young, if you fastened ALL the buttons on your jeans, your friends would assume that you’d taken holy orders. I seem to remember that it was customary to fasten the waist button, but leave the second undone, or vice versa. If you were really out to pull someone, you’d leave as many buttons undone as you could, meaning that your jeans were held up only by your pubis and hip bones, allowing you to signal  general up-for-it loucheness without saying a word.

To those that have, more shall be given.

I am #blessed with an abundance of denim because once word gets around that you’re a person who loves clobber, people tend to give you stuff they no longer want themselves. I have benefitted from many friend’s boyfriends and brothers cast-offs over the years. More on this particular subject – the joy of getting into a gentleman’s trousers –  coming soon in EOTB Jeans Week.