As a 90s teenager I remember hearing some people talk about how “bellbottoms” were making a comeback, and they joked about how silly someone would look wearing that. At the time I sort of agreed, because I associated that look with the 70s and it seemed out of date. (This was my first experience of a fashion trend being out of style and then coming back, something I hadn’t been aware of.)
Then one day as a college freshman in 1997 I was trying on jeans at the mall and I decided to try on this style called “bootcut.” I was amazed that it was the first time I felt like a pair of jeans actually looked good on me. (Possibly because I’m somewhat pear-shaped.) Even though they sort of resembled bellbottoms I didn’t care - and I actually started to like that aspect because I grew up on Nick-at-Nite and TBS reruns, so it reminded me of the clothes I’d seen on The Monkees and The Brady Bunch.
So for many years, bootcut was the only style I wore. And then in the 2010s, when skinny jeans were super popular, I started feeling like I looked silly and out of date. I know, at that age (early 30s) I should have been beyond caring what anyone thought, but I worried that I was embarrasing myself out in public, so I grudgingly switched to wearing skinny jeans.
And now I’ve heard that loose-fitting jeans (including bootcuts and flares) are back! Actually they’ve been back for several years now, but I wasn’t really paying attention to fashion trends by that point. So once again, I’ve gone whole-hog into this style, with an assortment of bootcut and flared jeans in different washes and lengths. I know this is such a minor thing, but it makes me so happy to wear this style again. It just feels more “me” than skinny jeans.
So this is a lesson learned for me. I’m just going to keep wearing this style of jeans as long as I can get them. And I’m not going to let fashion trends dictate what I wear. If in 15 years, somebody comments “look at that old lady still wearing flared jeans!” I’m not going to let it bother me.
One other thing I’ve noticed, I think it’s a lot easier today to disregard fashion trends. There are so many different companies making clothing that it’s easy to find something you’re looking for, even if it’s not stylish. And I think with society being less of a monoculture, there is more variety in how people dress anyway. In the early 2000s, if you went into a store selling jeans, like Gap or Old Navy, most of them would be similar styles with slight variations. Now, if you go into those same stores you can find jeans that are skinny, straight, bootcut, flared, tapered, barrel, plus full-length and cropped. Even though skinny jeans are apparently out, they are still easy to find in stores for people who like them. And that’s something I’m appreciating about today’s culture, the fact that despite trends existing, it’s so much easier, and more acceptable, to break them.
