The tracksuit era is over, and denim is back. But with a dizzying number of styles – and claims of sustainability to wade through – which will you pick?
The tracksuit era began – as every history student will learn from now on – on 11 March 2020, the day that the WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic, and the age of lockdowns commenced. The details of its demise are, as yet, not officially verified – but they say that journalism is the first draft of history, so I’m calling it for 31 October 2021, when the dystopian seaweed-green tracksuits of Squid Game became the go-to Halloween costume.
So now it is time to get back into your jeans. I don’t just mean getting them done up, although there is no doubt that may be a little tricky after two turgid years spent feeling dissatisfied with life while in eyeballing distance of the fridge. No, the real challenge is getting your head back into jeans, not your waistline. The most telling marker of the casualisation of our wardrobes is that jeans, which used to be what we wore to dress down, can now feel like too much effort. It’s not that I’m saying our standards have slipped, but – well, actually, that is exactly what I’m saying.
There is nothing more satisfying to reach for in the morning than your favourite denims. Jeans are timeless and democratic, because while silhouettes, colours and washes come and go, everyone who owns a pair of jeans makes them their own. To look at someone who is wearing a pair that they love and that suit them is like looking at the perfect black and white portrait: candid, but flattering.
This year’s Golden Globes ceremony had no red carpet, but it was a fashion moment that has turbocharged the denim revival. Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, one of the night’s big winners, is set in rural Montana in the 1920s, hinged between the dust-and-horses iconography of the cinematic western tradition and the modernity and raw energy of the 20th century as it begins to roar to top speed. Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil acts out masculine swagger in broken-in jeans with chaps, but it is Kodi Smit-McPhee as Peter who steals the fashion show. Slight and gawky in the stiff new jeans that his mother has bought him so that he will fit in on the ranch, he looks like a boy soldier in new uniform.
In westerns, jeans stand for real-world toughness – resilience, to use the buzzword of the hour – but also for the American dream. The brass rivets that are a feature of every traditional pair glint like the nuggets for which goldrushers once panned the rivers of the western states. Also, jeans represent sex – as they always have and always will. (Think of the album cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, with the Boss’s jeans-clad back view standing in front of the stripes of the flag.) Resilience, fantasy, adventure and sex appeal: it is little wonder, really, that jeans are a style icon.
from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3nE4Y7h
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