Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. My heart is pounding and my breathing erratic. I take a large gulp of air and try to calm myself. I rack my foggy, sleepy brain for what could have awoken me so violently…..and then I remember.
Low rise jeans are making a comeback.
NOOOOooooooo!!! I mean COME ON! How much more do they think we can take? What with T**** in power, Brexit looming over our country and Beyonce forcing us all to go vegan I’m at my wits end. Now, as a 40 year old woman with short legs and a wobbly gut, you’re expecting me to wear jeans that skim the top of my ever present pubes? How dare you!
Within the safe circle of this newsletter I will admit that first time round I was a big fan of the low rise. I really was. I would go so far as to say I was one of the first people {no doubt in the world} to start rocking them. In 2000 I saw a picture of Mariah Carey in a pair of jeans where the waistband had been cut off. It was the simplest DIY ever and I took a pair of scissors to 90% of my jeans.
{Carey with not a care in the world}
Why not? I could afford to back then. I had an unintentional six pack and I was twenty two years old. As I tell all my Wardrobe Detox clients ~ Your twenties are for experimenting with fashion, your thirties are for honing your style and wearing what actually suits your body shape. Regardless of whether it’s in style or not. I was not honed at twenty two. I was always experimenting and I didn’t realise that low rise jeans made my already dumpy legs look even dumpier and my long body like that of a dachshund.
While we’re in the confessional booth of Noughties nightmares I will also admit that I was not adverse to the showcasing of a whales tail. For the uninitiated amongst our congregation the whales tail was the uncouth styling of a coloured thong rising above the dangerously low sea level of your denim. I’m not particularly proud of this era but it was a hell of a lot better than the alternative which was exposing your ass crack to all and sundry whenever you bent down to pick up your dignity.
The cracks {pun intended} started to appear, however, towards the middle of the Noughties. My love affair with Britney’s favourite style of jeans* began to fade. I realised that with nothing supporting my stomach I wasn’t engaging my core when performing heavy lifting or simple general being. I started the incredibly bad habit of using my back instead of my core and I can tell you now the repercussions are STILL OCCURRING. Yes People, you heard it here first. Low rise jeans gave me a bad back and I have therefore deemed them a health hazard. They were uncomfortable, unforgiving and unflattering.
Now, with the return of the low rise jean must come the renaissance of the ‘going out top’. Again. DO ONE!!!
{chain mail, repurposed pillowcases and a handkerchief}
Never been a fan. Never understood them, never liked them. Back in 2002 these so called ‘tops’ would often resemble a triangle on your front and a complicated macrame task on your back. We were inundated with crop tops of every incarnation ~ T-Shirts with Little Miss characters on them, satin boob tubes purchased from Monsoon and worn by reluctant, bitter bridesmaids. The tiniest of tops would sometimes come in a smart tweed or an elegant houndstooth fooling no one that they could be worn as office attire. There were off the shoulder peasant tops skimming the underside of breasts, chain mail, cowl neck halter tops that were freezing to put on and could only clothe those of us with nothing larger than a -A cup. Denim bustiers, sequinned camisoles and lace trimmed vests.
What other horrors are lurking in the shadows? What unflattering sartorial memories are waiting to pop up on the frame of a teenager and confront us all with our youth?
As discussed before the cowboy boot has returned but I think I’ve made my peace and I’m on board with them. The ever practical fleece is making a comeback but it never went away in my eyes so the rest of what was in fashion nearly two decades ago I think I can do without. The asymmetric hems, the wide belts and the micro bags. These things need to stay with the lost, thin girl who laughed at men when they weren’t funny, didn’t speak up when she didn’t understand and cut her own hair with blunt scissors.
The bubble skirts, the ballet flats, the rose coloured glasses and those bloody painful, unattractive, low rise jeans need to be left in their place of origin. The Noughties….where nought really needs to be revived. Oh for something new in fashion.
*unlike me, Britney, who also owns short legs and a long body, has never moved on from the fashion crimes of her past. Like a lot of people tend to do she has stayed in the era she felt she looked the best. Google any picture of BS & note that the low rise will be her jean of choice for life. Bless her. May her extra long, tanned torso stay exposed forever. Not sure she’d be Britney without it.