Denim Has Been—And Will Always Be—My Style Soulmate - Glamour

I was eight when I got my first pair of jeans, and I had no idea what to do with them—which is ironic, since of all the pieces of clothing you can have in your closet, denim is one of the most freeing.

As a kid, I loved dresses. Thanks to repeated screenings of Disney films and living vicariously through Anne of Green Gables (the greatest movie ever made), I romanticized dresses, puffed sleeves, and floral prints. And if I did branch out, it would be to matching jogging suits, T-shirts and shorts, and stirrup pants with an incredible Beauty and the Beast print, if I do say so myself. Jeans seemed too cool, too adult, too something that seemed worldlier than my OshKosh sneakers. And then my aunt Daina bought me a pair of jeans from the Gap for my birthday. I was as enthralled as I was nervous.

My ascent into a life defined by denim was fast and furious. These Gap jeans quickly became my go-to. When I couldn’t afford to buy more, I would look elsewhere to get my fix: jeans on sale from Sears, a denim jumper from Northern Getaway. I quickly realized that jeans allowed for the amalgamation of selves. You could still wear puffed sleeves with a dark-rinse boot-cut, topped off with a woven belt (as if Anne of Green Gables had stepped into TGIF). I felt like I’d found a world in which my fashion choices were endless. Plus, I took comfort in knowing that the adults I wanted to be like when I grew up wore denim too.

Some of the (very cool) women who've worn denim iconically

Bettmann

Rose Hartman

Mario Ruiz

Of course, the older you get, the more you tend to reject the person you used to be and the way that person once dressed. By the time I was a teen, I wanted my jeans ripped, worn super-low, and as far from the pretty and preppy versions I’d once loved so much.

Fast-forward to my twenties, and my choice of denim acted as a bold declaration of self: These are the type of jeans I wear (high-rise skinny); This is the person I am (hip and cool—not really, but try telling a 23-year-old that); and These are the trends I reject (traditional femininity, despite vying for the male gaze). Arguably, denim was the fastest way to convey all three.

Trends come and go, but denim is forever

Hanna Lassen

But the less sure I was of myself as a person, the less I knew how to use denim (or any other type of clothing) to answer who I was and where I intended to go. I was, like countless people braving their quarter-life crisis, a young woman lost. So, slowly, my style began to reflect that. Eventually, I had no idea where denim fit in anymore—or if it ever would.

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