We all have a style inspiration, someone with a look we think of in the morning as we’re getting dressed, someone we hear in our ear as we’re shopping, someone we try to imagine in our clothes so we can accessorize like they do. We’re fascinated to see what they come up with next. We wonder how they do it. We wish we could be as daring, or as colorful, or as comfortable in high heels or short skirts or large jewelry as they are.
What are you thinking about as you get dressed?
It really depends on the day and how I feel, where I am going, how much time I have. Time is always
lacking nowadays because I have two young children, but when there is time I play dress up...I look in
the mirror and I start by paying attention to how I feel at that moment: womanly, girly, androgynous,
luscious, serious, stoic...and then find something in my closet that will project those emotions. I even go
so far as to recreate stories in my head while I am dressing. I have done this all my life, first with my
mother’s clothes and shoes.
How would you describe your style?
Chameleonic. I like to play. I like to be many things: Ambiguous, womanly, a peasant girl, sophisticated,
sexy, flamboyant, invisible...
I am an artist and I look at the body abstractly as a groups of shapes and forms. Clothes are structures
that you add on to dramatize the different parts of the body, but I also look at color, weight, light, and
flow, because dressing is theatrical in nature and there are so many emotions you can communicate by
the way you dress.
Has your style changed as you have gotten older and had children?
I don't have the time to be as creative with the way I dress. So many times I end up just dressing without
much thought, but that has happened to everything in my life, not just clothes. Because my children are still
small I approach every thing in my life in a very utilitarian way.
Also, I have never been much of a trend follower and as I gotten older I have removed myself even further
from trends, and I like this. I wear what I like. Comfort plays a bigger factor now-a-days than when I was
younger. I now think of things like: Is my back going to hurt with those shoes the next day?
But perhaps the biggest and most welcome change that has occurred as I have gotten older is that I now
dress exclusively for myself, because when I was younger dressing was more of an action to get a reaction
from people.
Why is style important to you?
Style is how you present yourself to the world. It is a form of self expression and not only happens
with the clothes you wear, but also how you carry yourself, how you take care of your self, how you
talk, how you cook, how you decorate your house. Style is in everything you do. It is taking things
that by themselves do not have much meaning and creating a story, your story.
What are the first three things that come to mind when you hear that there’s a product out there called Not Your Daughter’s Jeans?
For us: high waisted; light wash; pegged leg. Think Lands’ End catalog, women’s section. Beautiful models in unattractive, form-covering, age-increasing pants.
And this goes right to the heart of our perpetual question - is this where we’re at? Are we denying the fact that it is time for Lands‘ End jeans, and that we look embarrassingly inappropriate in our Forever 21 jeans? Are we wearing our daughter’s jeans, and should we get the hell out of them? Or, given that all of our daughters are pre-school age and we aren’t wearing jeans from The Children’s Place, is this even an issue?
We’ve been hearing rumors of jeans that might bridge the gap, giving nods where necessary to the fact that we aren’t 16 years old, while still looking good. And stylish. And affordable. Does it seem like too much to ask? So when we got wind of Not Your Daughter’s Jeans, we shuddered a bit at the name and went through a whole routine’s worth of mental gymnastics working ourselves up to finally admitting that we had to try them. Maybe they’d surpass our expectations, and we could wear them and look fabulous while also secretly re-naming them Daughter? What Daughter Jeans. Or, better yet, I’m Hot Jeans. Forget about the daughter altogether.
So off we went to our local Nordstrom’s, one lovely morning when all our kids were in school. We were skeptical, especially when a young and very hip saleslady we’d asked for directions shooed us out of her section towards the back. The rows of clothes we walked past got frumpier and flowery-er, like we were slowly headed into a bad neighborhood where we clearly didn’t belong.
But there they were - the NYDJ, racks and racks of them, tucked in among other older-lady gear like sweater-sets. Dark, light, black, white, skinny, bootleg, highly-rhinestoned back ends or regular plain rears, they had an impressive selection. The lovely saleswoman advised to go small, because they stretch (2% spandex) and, in her words, give you a tummy tuck. DING DING! Like magic, those words. We were on the (preschool) clock so we took a fast pass, grabbed a bunch, and went in.
First thing, they were tight. Real, real tight. But in a good way, not in a hanging-out-over-the-top way, or a can’t-bend-at-the-knee way. More of an I’m-being-cradled-gently-in-all-the-right-places type of thing. You will certainly want a small size, and nothing more than a small meal before trying them on.
Second thing, they were high.
They were the highest jeans I’ve had on in decades, pretty much since the minute my mother stopped dressing me. They fully covered my belly button, and I’m a tall person. This makes everyone back away slowly, we know. We were skeptics initially, too, and the high-waisted jean is, generally, a bad thing. But this highlighted a difference in our bodies - I am tall and big-waisted, and Denise is small and big-hipped. For her, they were so high she would want to cover the waist with a long shirt, which means she loses a good part of her bod - her tiny waist. But for me, it was surprisingly good, like all the benefits of maternity pants on top with all the jazziness of good jeans below. I always wear long shirts anyway, because my waist is never something I'd care to highlight. Plus, check me out testing the bend-worthiness of these babies - no crack! All the parents at preschool will rejoice and buy stock in this company if it gets me to cover my bum.
Third thing, they were comfortable. The 2% spandex is a big helper on that one, though there was some legitimate concern there might be a bit too much of the stuff...we didn’t want to cross any lines into jegging-territory, nor did we want them sagging after one wear, and we worried a bit that they were so stretchy it wandered into elastic-waist-land. But they were very snug without pinching or restricting, and believe me when I tell you again that we were in some unusually small sizes. Denise put the comfort issue to the test by locking herself out of her dressing room:
Fourth thing, they looked pretty damn good. We did hit a snag with the white jeans, which (as you know) Denise has gotten a bee in her bonnet about. She tried, she really did, but they were VERY TIGHT and VERY SEE-THROUGH and VERY BUMP-HUGGING, though not in the cute baby-bump way and more in the bumpy-thigh way. This, again, was a difference for us. Denise wanted more structure in the hips and thighs, slightly less cling so they flowed over her curves rather than snuggling up to them. For me, there's no such thing as too tight on the hips and legs. So the white were out, sadly. The other colors, though, looked real good, especially the darker they were.
Price tag is $100. We shrieked a bit at that, since we’re cheap Target shoppers, but allowed our minds to roam back a bit through the many pairs of thrifty but ill-fitting pants we’ve bought over the years trying to find the perfect fit, and wondered if our money might have been better spent in one place on one really good pair. It might be worth it, given how much we wear jeans.
But we know - WE KNOW - that buying in your mother’s section is flat out different than buying in your babysitter’s section. So you have to decide if you can make the walk to that dark and scary part of Nordstroms for the jeans that might be right.
Next up - to compare, we’re heading to Target to try out their Merona “Fit Solutions” jeans, which are also known as their “tummy panel” jeans. Can such support be found for a third of the price?
