Fashion Victim: Hopefully the jeans genie will answer my prayers

Sep 4 2008 by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

I AM currently in the grasp of a frightful anxiety. It engulfs me every time “Dress Down Friday” comes around. It wells up inside me whenever I go to the wardrobe. Because I know that time is nearing which every woman dreads.

No, not the menopause – God willing, I have a few decades to go before that.

Soon, I am going to have to buy a new pair of jeans.

As regular readers will have spotted, I am hardly averse to shopping. Some would say it is my raison d’etre. But I need to make something clear – the purchase of new jeans is not “shopping”.

It is not a relaxed day spent with girlfriends, leisurely wandering in and out of shops, maybe stopping off for a spot of lunch or a bottle of Pinot before coming home with half a dozen things you didn’t need but convinced yourself you could not live without.

No, buying jeans is an endurance test designed by evil fashion designers to make you hate clothes, curse shop assistants and despise your own backside.

I am not alone in feeling this way. I reckon most women would rather learn how to make internal combustion engines more efficient than try to find a pair of denims that don’t make their bottom look like a bouncy castle and their legs resemble a couple of comedy-shaped vegetables.

In the last five years, I think I have bought five pairs of jeans. It doesn’t take Stephen Hawking to work out that averages out at a pair a year.

Like anyone else, I love wearing jeans and when you find the right pair (Oh, how I mourned the Pepe bootcuts that saw me though the late nineties), it is sheer sartorial heaven.

The problem is that, as with men, when it comes to jeans the catch does not always justify the chase.

This season, I fear things could be even worse. After two years where to be seen in anything, other than the skinniest of skinny jeans, spelled fashion death, suddenly it is open season when it comes to denim.

Take your pick from the simple – straight leg, flare and skinny (yep, they are sticking around); the flattering – bootcut, kick flare and wide leg (like these from River Island, pictured left); to the ridiculous – boyfriend, stonewash and 7/8ths. While they might sound like something you get from a drug dealer, 7/8ths are those short leg jeans that have people asking you all day whether your budgie has passed away (pants at half mast, geddit?).

Having seen what boyfriend jeans – ie, baggy enough to look like you nicked them off your man – did for the svelte Katie Holmes and pipecleaner-like Posh Spice, I will give them a wide berth.

Ditto stonewash for fear of looking like an Iron Maiden reject. So chances are it will be a toss up between bootcut and straight leg.

Whatever style I choose, one thing is for sure. Come Saturday afternoon, I will be standing in a cramped, sweaty changing room asking: “Does my bum look big in these?”