It is all in the jeans!

We do not know when the “jeans fashion-bug” bit the world. For the cowboys of the Mid-West, the weather and their job made “denim” a natural choice. Since then, denim jeans have taken over the world. Jeans is the de-facto fashion statement!

Fashion has no rationale. Imagine Chennai in summer. The midday sun melts even the tar on the road. Scan around and you spot the youth parading in leg-hugging jeans. It takes another level of self-mortification to strut around in a material, with the coarseness of a gunnysack, in the heat of Chennai!

My grandmother had fixed ideas about jeans. “This evening, we will have guests at home. Be sure to discard this gunnysack and wear something proper!”

The old world had old ideas. A corporate professional had to be “tip-top” in dressing. It meant going to the office in a full-shirt and formal pant. If you were higher on the corporate ladder, you wore a suit and tie. The old order giveth way to the new. Now, the corporate uniform is jeans- from the CEO to the foot soldier. The older generation is baffled. “Are you going to office like this? Don’t you have a dress-code?” “This is the dress code Appa!” you hit back.  

Jeans and the color blue go hand-in-hand or leg-in-leg may be! A teenager’s wardrobe is filled with jeans by the dozen. Only the degree of blueness differs- from the light to the deep blue. The shades are so close you would think, the same pants are worn each day! The converse is equally true. You can wear the same jeans each day, and pretend you have a dozen in the same color.

Jeans have mutated over time. Starting from bell-bottomed and baggy-jeans, they moved to the figure-hugging ones.  You had “faded” and “stoned-washed” jeans. “Ripped-jeans” were made with a peculiar recipe- the jeans were shot with a pistol to drive holes through them! After all, fashion defies logic. It banks on that undefinable ideal- what is construed as “cool”!

Wearing a corset in the Victorian days seems like a punishment. What about skin-tight jeans? You hobble around with the jeans at the ankle, huffing and puffing, just to pull them over each leg! And once in, it takes greater effort to step out of them- you must literally scissor them off the body!

Jeans have made life easy. If they are smelly and unwashed, no problem! If they are crumpled, even better. Jeans have bridged the gap between the haves and the have-nots. The homeless and the Bollywood diva wear equally torn clothes!

For one, it is born out of necessity. For the other, it is a head-turning style statement!