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I’m not terribly fussy about clothes. Indeed, I’m working in a maths department, i.e. a serious contender for the title of the place with the worst dressed people working there. So it doesn’t take much to look ‘decent’ there. It’s not that I hate nice clothes per se but rather that I hate the fuss that comes with them. I don’t want to spend my days ironing shirts or moving carefully so that fancy jumper doesn’t rip or wrinkle. Just too much fuss. I don’t want to look after my clothes. I want them to look after me.
The only thing that’s possibly worse than looking after clothes is looking for them. I really dislike clothes stores. Be it for the need to decide which of their offerings you hate least, be it for the people who work there, be it for the other customers. Usually I go there because I need something and not because I particularly want something. A situation that makes choosing much more different. During the holidays my mum decided – like she usually does – that I need new jeans.
Sure, the old ones had some holes at the back of the legs – too much sitting of office chairs I suppose – which she had fixed, but they are fine apart from that. But, as usual, there’s no arguing with my mum. Most of the trousers I bought in the past ten+ years have been 501s. I simply love the fact that once you figured out the size, you can buy any pair anywhere in the world and it should ‘just fit’ with no further hassle. Easy shopping.
It didn’t start that easy because in the early 90s it was still said that the jeans you bought in the U.S. were made of more solid denim than the European ones (and they were and still are cheaper), so I bought the first of those jeans at the end of a holiday in the U.S. back then. The problem was that I had eaten (and actually enjoyed) almost 100 hamburgers in the month preceding that buy and was led to buy a 34/34… which soon turned out to be too wide for my real waist. So I settled for a 33/34 after that and somehow lost another size in the years after, ending up at the magic 32/34 numbers (much more convenient as the odd numbers frequently don’t seem to be stocked by stores).
Later on I discovered that those sizing numbers are in fact a bit more universal and that they transfer quite well to other jeans as well. So I became a bit more ‘adventurous’ and bought jeans like the 527s that have just been declared broken by my mum. I quite liked their slightly longer and relaxed ‘boot cut’ look… and at least in stores in the U.S. they had handy guides explaining to you the differences between the different jeans cuts in both words and pictures – for those of us who don’t intuitively understand what makes a pair of trousers ‘low rise’.
Now it seems that 527s never existed in Germany or have gone out of fashion and I could add a whole big complaint about the utter lack of invariance in the fashion industry’s output, but I guess I just don’t care enough. I ended up buying yet another number, 512, I think, which was said to be the successor of what I had in mind and fit reasonably well while not being ‘too long’, i.e. in the dangerous state where the back of the leg might touch the ground and be stepped on. Something that my mum will for sure have an eye on… At least I didn’t have to try different sizes.
Urgh.
Indeed, I always loved how “standardized” the fitting was across the whole Levi Strauss line — it applies to the corduroys and the Dockers line as well.
I looked at some corduroys as well… but didn’t get them in the end because I thought the corduroy wasn’t particularly nice – too ‘fine’ and thin.
… I guess I should wrap myself in corduroy that’s at least as comfy and warm as the stuff my iBook gets.
