00:08:58.960and I was like this is my chance I'm going to the Nordstrom flagship and I'm going to take
00:09:05.42030 pairs of jeans into that changing room and I did and I came out with one and I was like
00:09:11.920I did it I found a non-skinny jean that I think is like I can wear brought it home wore it for
00:09:19.300four hours and I was like these stretched out too much for like how I luckily Nordstrom I kept the
00:09:24.120tag on while I was wearing it in my house. So I will be able to return to Nordstrom. But like
00:09:28.120that was like, you know, an hour of my day. And I think about the work that you did with
00:09:35.000Jean Science trying to figure out like you ordered so many pairs of jeans. You tried on so many pairs
00:09:40.500of jeans. Yeah, I think it was 64 was the final number. It was well over 50 pairs. It might have
00:09:47.680been 70 by the end. I don't know. I blacked out at a certain point. Boxes of jeans were just arriving
00:09:52.860at my house constantly. And I would say most of them weren't even worth testing. It was the
00:09:59.020dressing room experience. You put them on, you were like, absolutely no, absolutely no. And then
00:10:03.920there were ones that I would wear for a day or two days, keep the tags on, and they would become
00:10:09.580different jeans over the course of the day. They just wouldn't deliver on what I wanted them to be.
00:10:14.000So what do you think is going on with the trend cycle? Is it accelerating? Is it just fast fashion
00:10:19.420trying to get us to like buy a new thing what's going on I do think it's accelerated I definitely
00:10:26.180think fast fashion is a piece a huge reason why and I think you just see it more on jeans because
00:10:34.180again we have such a clear vision in our head of how our body should look on in jeans and if you
00:10:40.460find something that even kind of sort of works you're like finally I solved it and then like
00:10:45.680three weeks later there's an email from Levi's or whoever in your inbox being like no those are
00:10:49.720the wrong jeans you can't do that anymore right and there's a weird and we see this perpetuated
00:10:54.400on TikTok and Instagram and you know everywhere that like the youth talk about clothes there has
00:10:58.780always been a weird backlash to quote bad jeans yes so like having the wrong jeans feels like a
00:11:08.160very dangerous proposition like it's a it's it feels risky to have the wrong jeans you're gonna
00:11:14.440code yourself as old. You're going to code yourself as fat. You're going to code yourself
00:11:17.600as untrendy and unstylish and unprofessional. Like there's a lot riding on having the right
00:11:22.700jeans. It's so fascinating to how that coding switches as we age. Right. Because when we were
00:11:28.360teens, it was you didn't want to have mom jeans. Right. Like you didn't want to have Lee jeans or
00:11:32.560whatever, you know, what we thought of as as mom jeans. And then as we aged, it's like I don't want
00:11:39.660have the jeans that make me look old instead of well I guess it's still old but it's just like
00:11:45.400you're what you're aiming for is a different like well and it's the trend coming around right
00:11:52.300because now the like gen z will wear mom jeans but they're wearing them ironically like they'll
00:11:58.180wear the giant jeans yeah and but they can pull it off because they are young and you know in many
00:12:06.080cases in terms of what you're saying on social media thin yeah and so then for me a fat mom to
00:12:11.360wear mom jeans would not be an ironic statement it would just be me being a fat mom in jeans
00:12:17.520and so then it's like oh no I have to do something different to subvert that when of course what we
00:12:23.300really need to be saying is like there's nothing wrong with being a fat mom yeah just be a person
00:12:27.140wearing jeans it's like like that what we're trying to communicate through the jeans is actually
00:12:32.300quite harmful and like negative stereotypes about right well and then you also you don't want to be
00:12:38.340the mom who's like trying too hard right right it's so hard right like you if you're trying like
00:12:46.860you have to somehow signal that you're like with it you're like i watch tiktok i know skinny jeans
00:12:52.880are out but also am i supposed to be wearing these white leg pants yeah i'm not gonna go too far
00:12:59.180Yeah. And you see this, I think, in the silhouettes that are marketed, like something that like, say, I don't know, anthropology. They're trying to find that comfortable middle.
00:13:57.360I can't do math, but many decades have gone by.
00:14:00.660And so if you're going to revisit a trend from your youth, it's not going to look the same way it did when you were 14 or 12 or whatever, you know, when you wore it.
00:14:10.720and so you have to process that yeah and and again I think it's the ageism too of like wait
00:14:20.320we can't have a trend that like what we thought was cool when we were young can't be back now
00:14:25.840because that would mean that we are like over the hill and we have to really push back on that right
00:14:29.800like yeah it makes sense when we were kids like I remember the 70s were trendy because that was
00:14:35.480you know the thing that was 20 years earlier like of course this is just how time works
00:22:54.720I got to snap them back yeah absolutely so again having multiple pairs like I hate that that's the
00:23:01.400answer because obviously that's expensive but I have had seasons where like I have the same I have
00:23:06.580two pairs of the same jeans because with two pairs of those jeans I can wear them four days in a row
00:23:12.340because I can only get two wearings out before they stretch out and I have to wash them but if
00:23:17.160I can then switch to the other pair I can swap off I mean again jeans mental load it's wild it's
00:23:24.660well but yeah the quality is not there they are not made the denim quality really changed like
00:23:30.840what we might remember I remember gap jeans in the 90s were like really really nice denim like
00:23:36.280this really thick soft denim that just felt really good and the way manufacturing has changed in the
00:23:44.980last 25 years like it is not it is much cheaper and often the brands when they're designing the
00:23:51.820jeans don't even know what fabric they're going to get from the factories like it's all happening
00:23:56.440in these like top level deals that the designers are like hoping it will be something really good
00:24:02.260but they're not getting that much control over it once it actually goes to manufacturing
00:24:06.100and I do think that adding stretch to jeans makes them more susceptible to wear out right yeah I
00:24:14.200mean that's the other really big change is we didn't have stretch jeans in the 90s and now we
00:24:18.100do and it's been like both a blessing and a curse I mean it makes jeans more wearable like you can
00:24:26.180breathe in them because a non-stretch pair of jeans like I actually like flinched thinking
00:24:30.860about putting that on my body yeah um but it also means they're going to stretch out faster
00:24:36.800and the and the percentage of elastic that goes into the jeans really impacts this yeah and the
00:24:42.260hard thing too is that like you can't even think about like patching you know I'm thinking of like
00:24:47.040what it would feel like to have a patch in that inner thigh region where my jeans always rub off
00:24:52.140like no no that would be terrible yeah yeah and the weight of this jean is different like it
00:24:59.200wouldn't hold a patch the same no no these jeans are a lot thinner than they used to be they're
00:25:03.500not gonna like take a patch i do still wear my jeans in need of patching around the house
00:25:09.400like i don't care who cares like the garden can see my inner thigh that's great yeah i can enjoy
00:25:16.660that. Okay, we're going to pair the next two questions about the quality of cheap jeans versus
00:25:22.800expensive jeans. The first question comes from Danae. Am I dreaming or did the quality of Old
00:25:28.220Navy jeans, an absolute staple for years, plummet almost overnight? The reasonable jump seems to be
00:25:34.840to Madewell or Abercrombie for women's jeans these days, but $40 for Old Navy to $128 for
00:25:41.660Madewell is a massive leap. Are there actually quality jeans out there that are more reasonably
00:25:47.340priced? Or, leaning into the why is everything so expensive right now question, is this just
00:25:53.260what we can expect to be paying for decent denim? And lastly, are my aspirational cool girl jeans
00:25:59.380from Air anything more special? Or is the $250 just for the label? And then here's Sarah.
00:26:06.020Katie Storino, who's an influencer, a plus-size influencer, inspired me to look at quote-unquote cheaper brands of denim because she said there is no longer a big difference in quality and style between lower price points and higher-end denim.
00:26:22.380So I tried a few examples from Old Navy and Torrid and was shocked to find that I agreed.
00:26:30.440There is definitely room to improve in terms of style, but I could find really cute pairs of jeans that were only about $30.
00:26:39.480And these have far outlasted some of my much more expensive pairs from brands like Madewell and Good American.
00:26:47.540what is going on is this only true for plus size jeans and if so why so some of this is related to
00:26:57.340the episode that we did with amanda mall about why clothes suck right now and you mentioned this
00:27:03.500earlier about like international agreements on standards for fabric quality and all this sort
00:27:08.640of thing but i really loved your discussion of cheap jeans versus expensive jeans when you did
00:27:14.460gene science. So what is your thinking here? I mean, I don't think there's a huge difference
00:27:19.780at all. I tried, I mean, I bought a $300 pair of genes during that experiment. They were just
00:27:26.760as disappointing as the $128 Madewells, as the $40, you know, like all the way down. And I think
00:27:34.800I can't quite answer if it's true for non-plus sizes because I am plus size and that's what I
00:27:39.280was trying um that's really where my focus was but it is a hundred percent true for plus sizes
00:27:44.200and the reason is brands like made well and the one that she mentioned air they don't know how
00:27:52.600to design jeans for plus size bodies so what they're doing is taking their fit model who is a
00:27:58.160size eight probably like they tend to do middle of the straight size range and then they measure
00:28:04.680everything on this fit model and then they just have these charts where they're like well a size
00:28:09.70010 will be two inches bigger and a size 12 will be four inches bigger and so on and so on and fat
00:28:15.900bodies don't just like we're not a thin body that's just been stretched two inches in every
00:28:21.140direction like that's not actually how bodies work so right and no one would say like oh you
00:28:28.240should do the inverse like let's have it fitting on a plus size model and then to get to a size four
00:28:32.720let's just like reduce. Right. Nobody's taking a size 18 and then just like shaving it down.
00:28:38.100It's not how it should work on either way. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, very often the cool girl brands
00:28:45.420that primarily make straight sizes, when they add the plus sizes, all they do is this like
00:28:49.720gradation thing where they just kind of stretch out the pattern. It gets wildly distorted and it
00:28:54.080doesn't fit anybody's bodies. The brands that do really invest in plus sizes are brands like Old
00:29:00.220Navy. I mean, it's complicated. They haven't done a perfect job by any means, but Old Navy knows
00:29:04.840that the majority of their customers wear plus sizes. And so they probably do have a dedicated
00:29:10.320plus size fit model who's probably an 18, who then they're like scaling it down a little bit
00:29:16.260for the 16, 14, and then up for the, you know, up to size 30 if they go that big. Maybe the Old Navy
00:29:21.840might only go to 26. Anyway, so at least there's like a hope that the plus size gene will actually
00:29:28.400work for you. But really what it comes down to is what I think all jeans brands should be doing
00:29:32.540is showing us their fit model and giving us her measurements. And then you should only buy jeans
00:29:38.980from the brands that have a fit model with your measurements. Like the reason I can wear universal
00:29:43.620standard jeans is because I'm a size 18 and their fit model is a size 18. And our measurements are
00:29:49.240probably not identical, but it's like the closest I can get. So that's some intel that the brands
00:29:55.040obviously don't advertise and that's a big reason why yes for plus sizes there will be you will
00:30:00.600often find better jeans at cheaper prices don't you think that like if people have the means they
00:30:05.940would want to spend more money on a company that has a fit model that is their size right like i
00:30:13.380mean i i would and i do want to do that but i can't um yeah i think the other thing that's going
00:30:20.340on though is the anti-fat bias in fashion is so endemic and so intense. A lot of brands
00:30:28.320don't think that their thin customers want to shop at a store that fat people buy clothes from.
00:30:34.560This is a very real bias. Yeah. And this is why they don't put the plus sizes in stores. This is
00:30:39.760why they shove them in the back corner of like a different floor of the department store. Yeah.
00:30:44.580Like they really don't think thin customers will think their brand is cool if they're fitting fat
00:30:49.400bodies so that's a big piece of it where they just aren't focusing here it's an afterthought
00:30:55.720even though it's the majority of people and even though plenty of plus size women have lots of
00:30:59.420money to spend on jeans like it's just not where their focus is and so they don't do it well and
00:31:05.220then when they don't do it well their plus size line doesn't sell well because they did a bad job
00:31:10.420and they didn't even advertise it well there must not be a market exactly and so the only way they
00:31:16.200can make money on plus sizes because they're trapped in this is to occasionally, this is
00:31:20.720what Old Navy does, every few years be like, we get it.
00:31:41.700I think you're totally right that like there are bad jeans at every price point.
00:31:46.200And there are good jeans at every price point.
00:31:48.340And so much of the game is like trying on a lot of different ones to figure out which ones work for you.
00:31:53.380And it might be old navy jeans and it might be like my standard during the pandemic were these AG straight leg jeans.
00:32:00.640And I would buy them when they would go on sale once a year.
00:32:04.360And I just bought the same jean every year for like three or four years.
00:32:08.720Part of the reason I liked them was because the denim was thicker and they didn't wear out as fast.
00:32:13.560but i don't think it's necessarily like i've bought i've bought expensive like mother jeans
00:32:18.540that stretch out and that like fit me poorly and i should have just bought uh i think i could have
00:32:24.880spent 30 for a pair of jeans that looked exactly the same that also stretched out and fit me poorly
00:32:29.140yeah no it's the 300 price tag is really they're pricing it at that point to convince you that it
00:32:37.920is like it's really part of the marketing that they're choosing a high-end price it's not really
00:32:43.740indicative of the quality of the garment at all yeah okay we're gonna move on into the ask and
00:32:50.280anything part of the show getting into jeans feelings and jeans advice if you want some brand
00:32:55.960recommendations if you want advice on shoes if you want a pep talk for letting go of jeans this is for
00:33:02.360you and just a reminder that if you're not a paid subscriber you normally wouldn't even get to hear
00:33:07.680this part of the show. So if you listen to the next 25 minutes and feel like you got something
00:33:12.180out of it, head over to culturestudypod.substack.com and become a paid subscriber so you don't miss
00:33:19.340any of our future gems of advice. Okay, so this first feelings question comes from someone
00:33:25.700also named Anne. Maybe a dumb question, but why am I so obsessed with finding genes that fit my body?
00:33:33.000I think I just don't have a gene-shaped body, but I can't seem to stop trying them on and then
00:33:37.460rejecting them and when i don't look like the correct image of a lady in jeans in my head
00:33:42.560why can't i give up on this is this the same thing that makes me cry at super bowl truck
00:33:47.900commercials despite being fervently anti-truck oh this is like it's swimsuit season because
00:33:55.700you're like everyone has a swimsuit body because you have a body in a swimsuit kind of thing like
00:34:00.600yeah you have a jeans body if you like to wear jeans yes again this is not to be very repetitive
00:34:06.900But this is because the lady in jeans in your head is probably a thin person, a person with a very flat stomach, you know, minimal hips, like a shape that maybe does not match your own shape.
00:34:19.680And so that's why this feels so hard because you're actually shopping for the body underneath the jeans.
00:40:06.920Yeah, I think you absolutely can quit jeans. I have for sure quit them for the summer anyway. And I was thinking the other day, like, I always quit them in the summer. And I'm always so relieved. I'm always like, oh, hooray, done with jeans for months. And then it's like, well, then why do I bring them back in September?
00:40:25.260it's just because of their supposed utility i really think that's it yeah and again i think
00:40:32.000it's like the fall fashion like fall fashion is very jeans heavy like once you start thinking
00:40:36.980about fall clothes like somehow jeans feel necessary and so it is about redefining that
00:40:42.980for ourselves it's about shifting your focus to prioritize comfort of your body more than
00:40:49.560matching up to an aesthetic um and like you have to just give fewer fucks i think like you have to
00:40:56.300be like yeah i'm 46 and it's okay that i don't look 22 in these jeans like yeah we're in you
00:41:02.120know because i'm not wearing jeans like you have to be ready to kind of embrace where you are
00:41:07.100and that is not something that's easy to do because yeah we're embracing a layer of invisibility by
00:41:13.880admitting that this body we're in now that doesn't feel good to try to you know try to fight for that
00:41:19.900I also think there's an element too of trying to let go not just of like the male gaze and
00:41:25.460dressing for the male gaze but also sometimes dressing for your like your friends because
00:41:32.080at least for me like my friends we've been friends since college right and like so often in our lives
00:41:39.040we all had the same type of jeans. We all had like North face jackets. You know what I mean?
00:41:43.940Like there was very much that like, Oh, I like that. I want to get that like trying to match
00:41:49.100fashion. And I have been really interested to watch my own reactions as we've developed more
00:41:56.440of our own tastes through our thirties and our forties. And instead of like, Oh, I want to dress
00:42:01.860exactly like you. How, how do you let go of that feeling? Like I want to dress like me. What is
00:42:07.620that? What does that even look like? I know. And there's also this thing of like,
00:42:12.760certain social groups enforce certain norms and certain body norms. Yeah. And so if you want to
00:42:19.520make a shift aesthetically, that will reveal to the world that you are bigger than you were
00:42:25.440in college, you know, or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it feels like almost like a coming
00:42:30.080out of sorts, like that you're gonna like, show up at this barbecue or this dinner party, and
00:42:36.300you're not going to be presenting your body according to the social norms and rules of that
00:42:42.320social circle yeah and that is can be really scary and I have definitely done that and been aware of
00:42:49.600like that's probably my personal biggest fashion hang-up and it stems from like feeling like I
00:42:55.720didn't know what the cool thing was to wear in like fifth grade yeah like it's like going deep
00:43:00.040it's like all we're all in the middle school cafeteria again yeah and wanting to fit in and so
00:43:05.080what's helped me is like yes figuring out one or two outfits whether it's jeans not jeans that I
00:43:12.000always feel like good and comfortable in that I'm like I can put this on and show up in whatever
00:43:17.840this situation is and feel like this is how I want to present myself and I'm okay that it doesn't
00:43:22.700match up with what everyone else is doing but finding those outfits is a lot of work. I think
00:43:27.220that this person should do what we suggest like do exposure therapy and get a couple of different
00:43:35.660styles of jeans and they could be depending on their size like there are a lot of places that
00:43:41.220are carrying a lot of different styles right now i actually noticed the gap has like a ton
00:43:44.920yeah of of wider leg right now old navy has a ton madewell has some um and just like wear them
00:43:53.020around and see which ones like feel fun to you that's what i would do and on her question about
00:43:59.100cigarette pants i will say universal standard makes i'm gonna say it wrong but i say pont
00:44:05.020pant i don't know if it's supposed to be like i always say ponty ponty that sounds like panties
00:44:09.780that can't be right anyway um the universal standard moro pont pant is like a it's made
00:44:19.220of a pont fabric which is like a very thick stretchy yeah fabric um but not polyester like
00:44:25.680it's a nice fabric and it has like a very tapered cigarette pant silhouette with it and I always
00:44:32.860keep those in my closet for like and I buy them in whatever size I need per season because they
00:44:37.740are just like a such a good like I don't have to think about my pants they have an elastic waist
00:44:41.440they're very comfortable but they are tailored and professional feeling um I would recommend
00:44:47.200checking that out so i think try all of those and if you don't like any of those like buy jeans
00:44:53.360who cares like buy as in bye like you don't have to you can wear cool like palazzo pants are in
00:45:02.040again you can be in your muumuu era i know well and palazzo pants kind of never went out like
00:45:07.620yeah you can always pull off a quirky style like that and not worry about whether it's on trend or
00:45:12.400not. Coastal grandma, always. Maybe a little more difficult in the winter, but I guess you just have
00:45:17.780to go to a former climate. The next question about jeans feeling comes from Sammy. Is my quest to
00:45:25.000find the perfect pair of jeans actually just diet culture? I'm starting to think that these jeans
00:45:30.140don't exist. Jeans never feel quite right lately. Maybe that's because my body is different and
00:45:36.460bigger since having a baby a few years ago and I'm still dealing with that. Maybe because styles
00:45:41.620keep changing, maybe because my body is still changing. I dream of being done buying jeans,
00:45:47.460but I'm afraid that's never going to happen. I've started to go hard on thrifting instead of buying
00:45:52.460new, partially because it takes the sting out of the disappointment when something isn't perfect,
00:45:58.080and it makes it way easier to move on from jeans that aren't the one. But I still catch myself
00:46:03.840thinking there are jeans out there that will be magical, and I just haven't found them yet.
00:46:07.780Do I need to book a trip to Boulder, Colorado to spend $295 on curated vintage denim?