Blue denim and I have never been friends. I associate it with the kind of bleak Americana seen in films such as Porky’s and lunkheaded jocks who might beat me up in a parking lot. Blue jeans stare at me from across the store floor and say, “You don’t play enough American football to wear me, sucker!” I make an inward squeak and head to the safety of the black jeans aisle.
In fact traditional blue jeans seem never to have quite recovered from being worn by Jeremy Clarkson – a sartorial death sentence that saw them labelled “dad jeans” and hastily shoved to the back of the closet. It was difficult not to feel they would for ever be associated with the “visiting a garden centre at the weekend” vibe.
There’s a new take on the staple, though: frayed denim. Essentially jeans that look as if you’ve taken a pair of scissors to the bottom of them, they follow the recent trend for self-loathing in denim. Just look at the names: distressed, stonewashed, ripped. RUOK, hun?
I’m looking forward to SS18, when “traumatised by something that happened in 1998 and keep writing about it on my Tumblr” jeans and “gently rocking back and forth to Fiona Apple” jeans appear on the catwalk.
Although you can wear it with a clompy boot and go for the “minor member of Depeche Mode” look (see any Vetements catwalk), sporting the frayed jean in summer means you have to be OK with an unabashed display of your mankles to emphasise the frayed bits (and also, I suppose, OK with saying “mankles”). But for someone whose pedicure routine has been essentially: ignore those cloven hooves until they turn into actual cloven hooves and you get cast in a low-budget 70s horror flick, this is quite a leap. Life is hard enough when you have to shave and deodorise in the morning, without having to worry about those extremities.
Saying that, I quite like the slight subversion of this good ole classic. It’s nice to be looked up and down and asked “Did you cut them yourself?” in mock horror by a family member. You feel exciting and punkish. And not at all like Jeremy Clarkson.
• Priya (above) wears jeans, £55, by BDG Denim, from urbanoutfitters.com. Shirt, £85, allsaints.com. T-shirt, £6, marksandspencer.com. Sliders, £55, cosstores.com. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management
