WASHES
The rules for washes are simple: dark washes for a dressier look or if you want to look thinner & light washes for a more boho vibe. Try to stay away from a wash with a brownish or yellowish cast cause then your jeans just look dirty. Also, avoid jeans with faded coloring on the thighs as this just gives the illusion that your thighs are fatter. Colored jeans always look cheap as if you’re wearing plain old colored cotton that’s just cut to look like jeans. People will think that you’re so poor that you have to wear fake jeans. Black jeans are cool, but only if they’re worn with a punk or rock and roll look and they better be skinny ones!LENGTH
If your jeans are not long enough then you will look stockier. If you’re wearing flats then your jeans should just barely miss touching the floor, that is unless you’re wearing skinny jeans in which case they should go down as far as possible below your ankle and just above your foot. You don’t want to cut off the visual length of your legs. Don’t buy jean shorts that end at the widest part of your calf that will also give you an unnecessarily chunky appearance. Also, don’t buy Daisy Dukes because no one wants to see that much of you except boyfriends and pervy strange men.
LEG WIDTH
Awwww, this is one of my favorite things to play with! Skinny jeans are still all the rage right now and you don’t have to be skinny to wear them. They look good on everyone, but make sure that yours aren’t too tight as you run the risk of looking like a bursting sausage. Can you believe that in 2005, only 4 years ago, I decided that I was ready for tight jeans and I went into a store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, CA and asked for some skinny jeans(which I had to describe because they had no idea what I was talking about) and the sales guy was so dismissive and poo-pooed my desire to wear jeans that were tight from ankle to thigh just like in the 80′s. He said, and you can quote me on this, ‘tight jeans will NEVER come back into style’. Oh Ho!!!! Really!!!!! I hope they fired that man. If you’re very young and reading this or you just have a bad memory, you might not realize that until a few years ago everyone, EVERYONE was wearing boot cut jeans, this drab cut is somewhat larger than straight leg cut but smaller than a flared cut. Bleeeehhhhh…… boring. Those bootcut jeans reigned supreme throughout pretty much the whole 90′s and most of this decade. Woof. When you’ve fully saturated yourself in skinny jean goodness then another excellent option is the wide leg jean! So fun. Find the hugest ones you can, such a great boho or punk look – tres cute. If you want to look a bit more straight-laced, dressy or proper then the straight leg cut is a good option. I really only sanction these 3 cuts: skinny, wide-leg, and straight-leg.
POCKETS
To have these sewn to the outside of your jeans, cute little external pockets, is so nice because then every time you put them on or do them up after going to the bathroom you don’t have to stick your hand in your pockets to flatten them out. Unfortunately not tons of jeans have that, but Rock & Republic does have a nice pair. Usually jeans have the standard 5 pocket arrangement where you’ve got that tiny pocket which you can’t fit anything into and if you can then you can never get it out again and then the bigger 2 front ones and 2 back ones, pretty passe stuff, but if you can find anything more interesting than that go for it, people(people like me) will appreciate you edginess. There is one very critical thing about pockets: more than any other component of the jeans they influence how good your butt looks! The back pockets should not be too small or placed to high and towards the center of your bum. This creates the illusion that your butt is HUGE! And those tiny high little crammed together pockets are floating in the vastness of space that is your ass! Oh dear.
RIPS & OTHER EMBELLISHMENTS
Rips are fabulous! Especially on lighter colored jeans, and especially especially on lighter wide legged jeans! Now you’re cooking with fire!!! They are also fabulous though on skinny or straight legged jeans, so let’s not lose sight of that. Some jeans are also decorated with crystals, embroidery, or other doodads and that’s fine too so long as it’s not a combination of all three and so long as it matches the rest of you outfit. If your jeans are super tarted up then remember to tone down the rest of your outfit – only one statement piece at a time!

Let’s talk about jeans.

That’s me in the photo. You can see I look very happy in my jeans. If not happy, then at least clothed. A better example is my friend Jessica who bought new jeans today and felt so good in them – I know that feeling well, I have many many pairs of jeans from size 30 (when Dad died and I drowned my sorrows in chocolate) to size 26 (when I dated this really skinny guy who always seemed to be skinnier and daintier than me – argh! I had to win). Mostly I’m about a size 28. What mainly lead me to this topic though was cleaning out my jeans collection yesterday, which was a gala event. During my own personal runway show I tried on every single pair of jeans(that I could fit into) and determined whether they went into the Keep But Store Away Cuz They Don’t Fit pile or the Currently Using pile or the These Jeans Don’t Actually Look Good On Me And I Will Never Allow Them To Sully My Image Again pile. I tried to be very honest, especially with how my butt looked in them, it’s taken enough abuse lately. :/

Some of the parameters that you can mess with to find jeans that you love, for many different aspects of your life such as: strolls along the pacific ocean, sipping a chai latte on Haight & Ashbury, your company picnic, and dancing on stage at night clubs; are washes, length, leg width, pockets, rips, and other embellishments.

I will discourse more on this topic in my next post. Right now I am sleepy. Goodnight! xo