Taking Comfort in $50 Denim Nostalgia
I recently walked into a department store and spent $50 on a pair of jeans. Fifty bucks. For jeans.
Some people have been paying that much for years. They justify it as the price of being fashionable. But I’d sworn off denim when the price went over $20 and the demands of appearance replaced those of comfort. The countercultural kid in me had rebelled at the thought of paying so much for clothing that was once a cheap symbol of rebelliousness. Maybe I even thought I’d outgrown jeans.
Since then I’d survived for years on corduroys, which never fit right and bagged at the knees, on wool slacks--which always felt like they belonged to my father--and, when I moved to sunnier climes, on cotton slacks that were practical but gutless.
I decided to give jeans another chance. Perhaps it was the weather, the slightest hint of fall in the heat of a Southern California October, that drove me to the mall. One gropes for substance wherever one can find it. Lacking golden leaves and wood smoke, I headed for the jeans rack.
Ever penurious, I looked first in the “budget” rack, where $40 and sales tax would get me jeans with lots of brass tacks and curly stitches. It didn’t take long for me to realize that tight waists and vise-grip thighs were fashionable, and I was not.
In desperation, I turned to the $50 pile. These jeans seemed to be distinguished by the famous names of their designers and by the time they had spent in industrial-strength washers being pulverized to a faded shadow of their former selves. I used to spend idle Saturday nights washing my jeans to achieve the same effect, but these days apparently you have to pay someone else to do it for you. One brand even advertised that it was stone-ground, an attribute I had thought was reserved for whole-wheat bread.
At last I found a comfortable pair. These “dungarees” were billed as being “from an age when comfort and durability were more important than fashion and style.” They looked it. But I succumbed to the sales pitch, and before I had time to reflect on my surrender I pulled out my plastic, did the deed and ran for it.
I wear my new dungarees a lot these days. They’re perfect for weekends and evenings, when I’m not dressed up in what I still think of as a costume involving three pieces with pinstripes. And while my new jeans don’t really make me feel like the rustic homesteader the ads said they would, they do have me thinking about the jeans of my boyhood.
One of the first pairs of jeans I owned figured prominently in my initiation into one of the great rituals of manhood: shaving. The scene in the family bathroom was recorded through the eyes of our old Kodak. I was 5 at the time, my father perhaps a little older than the 33 years of age I am now. The photograph shows my dad half-dressed for work, and me in felt-lined jeans that were several sizes too big. (In my mother’s time-honored phrase, I would “grow into them.”) The camera found me wearing my favorite cowboy hat and a “Fanner Fifty” six-shooter at my side. Both my father and I have razors in our hands and our faces are copiously lathered with shaving cream. I look to be enjoying the process a lot more than he does, but then, my razor didn’t have a blade in it.
In the years to come, as my mother promised I would, I grew into and out of a lot of jeans. We weren’t allowed the rag-bag look that is apparently de rigueur for today’s schoolchildren, but the jeans went on as soon as I got home from my classes. My pants always seemed to be rolled at the bottom.
In high school, my jeans became an ally at a time when parents and teachers seemed to be conspiring to make me someone I didn’t want to be. I never really got it clear exactly whom they wanted me to become, but I know for sure that it did not have anything to do with jeans--so I wore them all the time.
It wasn’t until college, though, that my jeans became a true political statement, a uniform in fading blue that we saw as a blazing symbol of individuality. Wearing jeans then almost seemed in and of itself to equate with opposition to the war.
I suspect I was not alone in secretly resenting that the women of the day had also begun to wear jeans. I kept my mouth shut about it because that was the politically correct thing to do--and because on some level I was willing to overlook this co-opting of a male prerogative because I was glad to have company in what seemed like a brave stand against war.
First among the Great Jeans I Have Known was a pair from the era that stayed with me through college and well into my 20s. These long bell-bottoms were as good for marching as hiking, for studying as skiing. They were the only thing I owned that seemed appropriate both for socializing with a girlfriend’s parents and committing civil disobedience. (I generally tried to keep the two events well separated, but the jeans provided a nice continuity.)
Paisley Swirls
Down the legs of those pants I created my own paisley swirls in ink and felt tip. Creating those designs saw me through hours of lectures, political debates and roadside waits for a ride. Occasionally I even invited a friend to add her designs to my history on denim.
When I made my way toward California a decade ago, I used precious backpack space to bring those jeans, though they were by then approaching the denim version of senility. Later, in an uncharacteristic fit of orderliness, I gave them away to the local Goodwill.
Though those jeans are gone, their spirit lives on. As I think of it, it was probably their ghost as much as anything that prompted me to part with $50 and buy new ones. I guess nostalgia’s just more expensive these days than it used to be.
