Dear Diary, the council say I owe them £1,400, and they're going to send me to the workhouse*
*They didn't actually say that last bit...
Admit it: you all thought that after last week’s closet clear out left me without a single pair of jeans or trousers to my name, that I’d probably buy those £65 jeans I was going on about, didn’t you?
But I did not!
Well, I mean, yes, I did.
But!
I sent them back! Because, like all of the other jeans — so, so many jeans — before them, they were also hideous on me. I don’t know whether they’ve changed the style, or whether the last pair I had were also hideous, and I just didn’t realise, but either way: hideous. So back they went, the very next day. And the experience led to another one of those epiphanies I’ve been having lately. It was this:
What if I just don’t wear jeans any more?
This probably seems really obvious to you but it was actually quite a daunting thought for me, because jeans have always been my fallback fashion item: the thing I wear when I don’t know what else to wear. But, over the last few years, my relationship with jeans has become fraught. Toxic, even. Because I still love the jeans, but the jeans, it would appear, no longer love me.
Skinnies look dated and unflattering on me. Wide-leg/baggy jeans look current, but still unflattering. Mom jeans just look unflattering1. Slim legs look just like skinnies, and bootlegs/flares give me uncomfortable flashbacks to the noughties, and wet, frayed hems dragging along the ground. (Also, would give me a huge shoe issue now that heels have been relegated to The Past, and bootcuts + trainers = UNFLATTERING.)
I think I need to give up on jeans, really. The problem is, what to wear instead of them, given that I hate tights (which means dresses and skirts are a “summer only” thing for me) and trousers always make me look like I’m going to work in an office in 2005?
What’s the alternative, though?
This, my friends, is one of the (many) questions this week’s diary will attempt to answer…
