This morning I lugubriously cajolled myself into getting up and donning some clothes, including a pair of jeans that I have always loved far more in theory than in practice. They are a product of a birthday "spree" that petered out rather quickly at Charlotte Ruse and manifested in a bathetic inventory of two or three highly practical sale items that weren't quite the right fit, but were work-appropriate. Like all things at Charlotte Ruse, these pants seem like a good idea and even embrace a breezy sort of elegance... on the hanger. The material is succulent - cascading with coruscant silvery notes that suggest but never overtly state "pinstripes". The inseam is blessedly high-fashion (I am coming to discover that, as a leggy tall woman who deviates downward from the average American girth, I am a secondary target of high-fashion lines - lines which traditionatlly cater to vaguely hominid aliens who teeter through life on six inch stilettos and ten diet martinis a day). The size could theoretically fit me, as far as sizes have ever had any correlation to bodies beyond a drunkard's toss of the dice. They, of course, do not actually fit me. That would, of course, be absurd. No, instead of fitting, they prefer to shimmy down my body to a critical tipping point just south of my underwear elastic and linger there, waiting for me to move a funny way or perhaps lose 0.0001 of an ounce before they come crashing down around my ankles. They are so beautiful and yet so useless.
The pair I bought before these were a similarly regretable product of fevered shopper's panic. I have certain specs when it comes to jeans from which I rarely depart: boot cut, dark wash, low riders... I should add long, but at the time I was benightedly convinced that the regular lengths were alright too. I have a pair of favorite jeans that I wear religiously: They are an extraordinarily cheap no-name brand of stretch jeans retrieved from the Fred Meyer's juniors section - at the time I was about ten pounds heavier and they fit me nightmarishly, yet they somehow managed to sneak home with me and wait until none of my other pants fit before alerting me to their presence. People still ask if they are designer jeans. They aren't perfect, but they are the only thing approximating tailoring in my vast closet. They're also incredibly low cut and completely indecent for anything attempting to approximate "professional", yet too casual for anything fancy/sparkly (read fifty percent of my wardrobe); they thus only match with some of my intentionally unprofessional tops and a few other ill-fitting but well-intentioned Charlotte Ruse little-black-somethings.
Anyways, having had some sucess with those pants juniors pants, I thought it was time to buy a second pair of similarly situated juniors pants. I tried. I failed. I found a pair of pants that somehow managed to "fit" both my body and my specs, and yet not fit at all. They clung to my thighs like a co-dependant lover, forming a denim stretch pant that might have been the highest vogue in the late 80's. They were dark, but something about the color was far too blue and failed to convey denim to my discriminating eye. The pockets were ill-advised in their placement in ways imperceptible to the concious eye, but jarring in effect. They flared at the wrong point in my leg and never fluted enough to create the desireable visual arc characteristic of boot cuts. Worst of all, they were short and cut off just around the little nib on my ankle. In sum: a visual cacophany. I discovered these imperfections about two minutes after purchasing them. My solution at the time was naturally to put them on and run around the mall half in tears trying to find a shirt that would match them. Shopping is to the brain what pummelling is to a fresh nose job. I kept these for about six months, occasionally retrieving them from their designated spot on the floor of my closet in a desperate attempt to redeem them. They worked for dancing blues in long shirts and dark rooms. I finally flung up my hands and admitted defeat. Incidentally, the shirt I found while cavorting around the mall in a tizzy was surprisingly nice and I'm wearing it today and have never had any cause for complaint.
Aside from the aforementioned jeans, I have the following other pairs: (1) silver pinstripped denim juniors-fare that were once seer suckingly tight and have since become scandalously low riders that I can remove without unbuttoning; (2) a pair of grey skinny jeans, which I purchased many sizes ago and which defy both the laws of physics by fitting exactly as they did when I purchased them, and my preconceptions about what jeans should be; (3) a pair of gap jeans which I bought for casual days at work - these have always been foppishly baggy, have always hinted at phantom saddle bags and steatopygic mounds of ghostly gluteal mounds, and have drawn accusations of anorexia and other ailments because surely I must be wasting away to be found drowning in a pair so full of folds and wrinkles. In other words: I have one pair of pants I like, another few I enjoy in limited circumstances, and a couple of pairs for which I hold a simmering resentment even as they survive the usual closet-cleaning. It seemed like time to try for a new pair of jeans. And so...
... today I went to Goodwill. I even found a pair. In my ideal world, my jeans would fit. In this imperfect world, I will take not-fit-so-horribly-as-to-make-it-hard-to-walk-and/or-make-me-cry-every-time-I-pass-a-reflective-surface. As I mentioned before - regular jeans are not made for me. They are for shorter women or perhaps taller women looking for capris. Regular jeans hang awkwardly like hair that's "growing out" after a cute short cut. I find this endemic shortness amusing because the few pairs of slacks I've purchased have been gloriously long - some drag on the floor even after I've mounted my tallest heels, and a few pairs have even required a trusty staple-hem to make it through the work-day. Why jeans are for short women and slacks are for giants, I couldn't say. I suppose it's possible that slacks are more likely to be sold with hemming and alterations in mind, and as such come with material to lose, while jeans are essentially pret-a-porter. I refuse to credit the fashion industry with that level of logic.
Whatever the reasoning, jeans are invariably too short. There are occasionally longs left amongst the cornucopia of jeans at Goodwill, but it's rare to find these lucidly labeled to find them in the jeans jungle. I would venture to suggest that very few jeans-for-the-masses manufacturers care much about advertising the length. Only the expensive pairs that once retailed for double digits seemed bothered to supply an inseam length, and this was furtively stashed in the middle of washing directions that I would never personally bother to consult or follow. After multiple failures, I stumbled upon a pair of Michael Kors jeans. They are too short, but less too-short than any of the other jeans. Because Michael Kors is the sort of designer who - aside from criticizing people on Project Runway - generally dresses models up in funny "clothes" and sucessfully charges hundred of dollars for the end result, these jeans actually bothered to list the inseam length. In this case they were 33's, which is about 1.5 inches shorter than my flat shoe/low heels ideal. Also, because he is the sort of designer who can charge hundreds for funny looking "clothes", the Goodwill price was around the $20 I'd probably think to pay for retails purchases. On the other hand, they kind of fit. I hope. I always think they fit when I buy them...
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