Denim, while a major component of my life, hasn’t always been central to my wardrobe.

As a child jeans were worn in winter activity. I grew up skiing in Virginia on hills small enough to necessitate only a few turns and temperatures barely dipping below freezing. I wore, during the rough years ’87 to ’91, a series of very bad jeans while bombing the hills. Stonewashed black Lee, for example. Levis “BIG” — a garment designed to capitalize on the baggy look slowly becoming popular through urban music. These jeans were always accompanied by gaitors, functioning to keep snow out of boots [Figure 1].

Figure 1: Imagine this guy is younger, that’s what I looked like when skiing.

Wearing jeans while skiing meant wearing rather damp trousers. And so, when leisure time came, sweats or other dry pants were thrown on. Denim never mixed with my everyday outfits, and remained crucially tied to life in the mountains for some years.

When the family moved to Connecticut from DC in 1992 I moved into a school with a rather staunch dress code. We were taught, young as we were, that hard work required proper dress. In this case, it was white collar dress. Blazers, ties, khaki slacks and stodgy lace-ups.

Once in a blue moon the powers above would grant a dress down day. Inevitably I would use this opportunity to wear athletic shorts. The cool kids wore jeans. They had girlfriends. I was a loner with no romantic interest. It would take years to put two and two together.

Highschool arrived and the dress code was slightly looser, yet with one strict caveat. NO JEANS. My wardrobe grew to include a wide array of brown cargos, cords and duck pants. Denim still hadn’t found a home in my life.

By the time I reached college and found freedom from imposed decorum, I’d been so out of the loop with jeans I didn’t even know where to start. I started with crap. Jeans that lasted for a week. Jeans that fit terribly. Jeans that had embarrassing, in retrospect, washes.

In 1999 I moved to raw denim. They were EU Evisu, bought at American Classics on the Kings Road. They got me laid. (True story, but this is mostly because the blond Wisconsinite I slept with recognized them as “fancy” and “European”). Sex alone did not push me into the land of excellent denim, just pointed a more thoughtful direction. In nice jeans I could meet women and there was something appealing about breaking a pair in from scratch.

After graduation, I decided that rather than entering the real world I’d just go to graduate school. The break between this and undergrad was a mere six weeks. One would think that a prolonged period of relaxed dress followed, but in fact I again entered hallowed halls with a set vision of decorum. I needed, more often than not, to don a blazer (which, conversely, I refuse to match with denim at any time). I again wore ties. And, proper shoes.

Despite loosening things up within the institution by studying the rise of the American tattoo trade, I was still gearing up for a career in museums. This is the land of preppy meets business casual. Tough terrain really, given the two don’t blend all that well. Denim, of course, was not in the regular cards.

2006 almost at an end, I decided to leave my job. I was flush full of confidence that a new one would soon appear. It didn’t. Unemployed, I turned to something lost in life… DENIM (not really, that would be quite sad, but suspend disbelief for the purposes of a story).

Given I had a) time and b) no dress code at all, I purchased a pair of Sugar Cane “Hawaii” at Blue in Green [Figure 2]. The primary reasons for the buy were simple - the one wash state removed all fear of fucking up and shrinking the damn things and the off the rack length was spot on. I wore them for the better part of a the next year [Figure 3]. They became statement to a new life goal. Never again get caught in the land of “business casual.”
{For the purposes of simply answering the weeks question, the above paragraph is it}.

Figure 2: Pocket detail of Sugar Cane.

Figure 3: Terrible photograph taken to show wear patterns on Sugar Cane.

So far, the plan has worked. I dress in whatever I damn well please at the office, despite what appears to be a rather conservative code amongst the other men. Given presumed expertise in the “internet,” “youth,” “tattoos,” and due to having a blog on some site named black lodges nobody seems to care.

The Sugar Canes remain in constant rotation, though have been joined by a lovely washed pair from fellow blogger Ian Pailey’s Garbstore and a raw from, and I probably shouldn’t really mention this now, another fellow blogger and the question sponsor, Denim Demon [Figure 4]. In a few months a pair that was lost in the shuffle of a move from REAL REAL Genuine will also fold in.

Figure 4: Three weeks into my Denim Demon.

While many of the people around me (outside of fashion/creative/music/etc) are forced to give up jeans, as my years increase my time devoted to them has as well.

Hopefully I can keep this current lifestyle and not fall under an unwanted watchful eye again.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 16:48 and is filed under weekly question, denim. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.