Skinny Jeans, Cold Dead Hands: Learning to Love (or Live) with Trends

The r/FemaleFashionAdvice sub-Reddit has never been a destination for incisive fashion discussion, but it does, among other things, offer a good sampling of the Average Person’s secret fashion worries. FFA abounds with posts asking for advice on whether one looks too old, too young, too fat, too skinny, too rich, too poor … and how to look more or less of those things, depending on the poster’s mood and unacknowledged biases. It’s kind of exhausting, tbh. And that’s not all. Another topic about which posters fret an inordinate amount is trends. What’s trendy, what’s not. Looking dated, along with being old (a moving target generally positioned around age 30), is possibly the Worst Fashion Sin one can commit as far as the FFA commentariat is concerned. The flip side of that conviction, and equally fiercely held, is a devotion to certain trends.

Spend any significant amount of time on r/FemaleFashionAdvice and you will encounter the phrase “they can pry my skinny jeans out of my cold dead hands” with almost reassuring regularity.

It was so ubiquitous for a while that “cold dead hands” became something of a meme, not only on the FFA circlejerk sub-Reddit, but also on the main sub-Reddit as well. At least millennials have a sense of humour, right?

Perhaps it’s a measure of how little I love jeans relative to other people, but I found the transition between jean trends fairly painless. I’m not bragging, honestly. Trend transitions in general should never be a cause for fretting. The process looks something like this:

1. I spot a new style of something. Jeans, shoes, doesn’t matter. This might be on a runway, on a Fashion Girlie’s Instagram, in a magazine, in a store, or on the streets of my town. There are many phases and entry points to a trend as it ripples out from the centre. Unless you’re working in the fashion industry, it doesn’t matter that much when you become aware of a trend. If it’s late in the game, it’s worth considering how much you want to “invest” in that trend (financially and emotionally, hah!).

• I may not be sure if I like this new style. If it’s not an immediate “yes”, I sit with it before I reject it. Sometimes the eye needs time to adjust to something new. Other times, on calm and measured reflection, it’s just a “no”. Not everything is for everyone. This is ok. One is not any more or less stylish for not adopting every trend out there.

• Okay, maybe I do like it. Off to the thrift stores to see if I can find something similar to experiment with.

• I got it and I love it. Time to stop buying the old style and focus on the new.

• New style is fully embraced, but always with a light grasp. No cold, dead hands. I enjoy what I love, but I’m always open to new ideas.

I also don’t immediately throw out all the existing items of the old style in my closet. If I have several, I might pare down to one or 2, but I keep the best versions (best quality, best fitting, etc.). Trends are cyclical, always. It might take a long time in some cases, but things come back. Just look at bootcut jeans. If you have storage room, keeping good quality clothes (that fit you well) past their current “trend date” is a good approach in terms of sustainability.

I have been on the wide-leg denim wagon for well over a year now, and I still have a couple of pairs of skinny jeans in the back of my closet. And let me tell you an even darker little secret: I still wear them sometimes.

Here are some thoughts to chew over.

One.

Skinny Jeans As Outfit are currently “out” of fashion. That is to say: if the outfit is centered around skinny jeans, and skinny jeans are the first and maybe only thing you notice about that outfit … it’s out of step with current fashion.

But Skinny Jeans As Style Building Block are a different, much more fluid story.

People get very hung up on the idea of things looking dated. But it’s always a combination of items that looks dated – in the sense of being suggestive of an era that isn’t currently trending – not necessarily the items themselves. I’ve done enough wardrobe remixing in my time to know that the same piece can be used to create outfits reminiscent of very different eras.

I promise you that you can wear skinny jeans in Our Year of The Lord 2023 and absolutely not look dated. Will you look trendy? No. But you can look cool AF in a way that isn’t tied to any particular trend or era. That’s called personal style.

I saw a male-presenting person on Instagram rock black skinny jeans with a majorly oversized chunky knit cape thing and tall platform shoes in a way that referenced both Rick Owens and Lenny Kravitz with a healthy dose of Gen Z “no f*cks given” attitude, and let me tell you: that was fly as hell.

Two.

I sometimes wear Skinny Jeans As Outfit. I mean, I don’t post about it on Instagram because it’s the equivalent of that brunch plate nobody really cares about. There are times when function triumphs over style, though, and skinny jeans are damn handy when the snow is a foot deep and I need pants that I can tuck into my quilted winter boots. They’re also handy when I’m gardening in the fall, and I need long pants that won’t flap around or get easily damaged and will protect my legs from rogue thorns and other hazards.

It’s good to recognize the utilitarian value of clothes. Even as someone who generally looks at clothes as a tool of creative self-expression, I know there is more to it than that. Just because something isn’t trendy, doesn’t mean it hasn’t got a place or purpose in one’s closet and life.

I leave you with these parting thoughts:

Love the things you love. Wear the things you love. Use them as tools of authentic self-expression. Use them as practical tools for living.

Know there are other tools out there. Some useful to you, some not. Sometimes, you won’t know which until you try.

Honour the tools that have served you well. They may serve you well again. Be prepared to put them down from time to time. It will be okay, I promise.