Wednesday, October 11, 2006

There shall be locusts, darkness, festering boils and skinny jeans


About a week ago I went shopping with my boyfriend to try to find some slim black pants. And no, I didn't say "skinny." I said "slim." I think that if I tried to make that distinction to any major retailer this season, it would go like this:

"Do you have any slim black pants?"

"Skinny black pants?"
"No. Slim black pants."
"Skinny?"
"Slim."
"Skinny black pants?"
"No. Slim. Like, close-fitting, but not tapered and skintight."
"Ooohhh! Skinny pants. Yes we ha--"
"No. Slim."
"Kate Moss?"
"No."
"What?"

Yes, it is clear that skinny jeans have emerged as the eleventh plague of Egypt, and my boyfriend Nick has been acting like a burdened Pharaoh. He hates skinny jeans with a burning passion, so as soon as we arrived at the store I grabbed a pair and ran into the dressing room to torture him. The pair I grabbed were black and way more expensive than they looked, and when I came out to show him, something really weird happened. He said, "Jesus. Those actually look really good." I checked to make sure his pupils weren't dilated and then looked in the mirror. He was right. I was actually considering buying them until we realized that when I walked they made the same sound as the nurse's pants when she walks down the hall in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

So I did something foolish. I got cocky. I took the fashion fluke of that first pair to mean that skinny jeans totally worked on me, despite my short legs and big thighs and basically every flashing red warning sign for me to steer way clear of this trend. I went into another store and picked out a pair of cheap light grey ones from the junior's department.

Oh. my. god.

Let me just say, the resemblance between myself and this woman in her before picture from a What Not To Wear episode of Oprah was both striking and extremely troubling.


I left those pants on the floor of the dressing room (usually I'm a much better customer than that but these were so bad that they really deserved the dramatic abandonment) and got the hell out of there.

And I still haven't found slim black pants.

If, unlike me, you actually can wear skinny jeans (and if you can, then by all means do because they can be totally badass) the ones at the top are from girlshop.com

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am so in love with skinny jeans. i refuse to wear any other cut! what do you think about acid wash? i know that sounds horrendous and i probably broke 10 fashion laws just mentioning it, but i saw kate moss (haha) sport a pair in some ad and they looked real good on her.

Nicky said...

too funny! yeah, i cannot pull off skinny jeans at all either. and i'm still not sure if i want to...

Anonymous said...

Skinny jeans really are the 5th Horsething of the Apocalypse. Straight leg? Totally fine, especially on short legs. The minute you work any tapering in there? Total pear city. And I do *not* have saddlebags & no pair of evil jeans is going to convince me I do.

Anonymous said...

the ONLY time i wear skinny leg jeans is when I'm wearing slouchy boots over them... otherwise my thighs look massive.
I agree with ambika - straight leg are better.
And yes - guys just dont get it (along with many chick things)

Unknown said...

Slim just sounds so much better than skinny does. Wouldn't you much rather be slim than skinny, it sounds much more classy.

Honeybee said...

Tito - last night I saw a picture of Kate Moss wearing trousers that were skintight and looked like they were made of a garbage bag. And guess what? She looked fantastic. It's was very irritating.

Alice said...

AUGH! I'll be having nightmares about those...

Lauren Messiah said...

haha! this is your funniest posting yet!

Unknown said...

like you i had an aversion to skinny jeans & pants, but i found that Joe's Jeans Cigarette Leg in black were really chic. I don't think I would try any other color than black or any other wash and you definitely don't want FRUMPY BAGGY skinny jeans as demonstrated by Oprah, but with the right shoes, top, and confidence you can rock them just as well as Kate Moss. Oh, but I totally understand so you'll be happy to know that Kate Moss was spotted wearing some high waisted flares not to long ago so the skinny trend just might be on it's way out.

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