Hole-y Jeans! Fashion That Hardly Qualifies as Clothing

Just because I haven’t been invited to next week’s celebrity-studded Met Costume Institute Gala doesn’t mean I haven’t been giving fashion a lot of thought lately.

And were I somehow to score a spot on the red carpet, even if only among the jostling paparazzi, here’s the question I’d pose to Vogue Editor in Chief and ball organizer Anna Wintour.

photo:mariepromNo, it wouldn’t be, “What are you wearing?” But, “What gives with jeans?”

I doubt I’m alone in noticing their increasingly distressed condition

First, it was holes. That’s no big deal. People have had holes in their jeans since the ’60s. I suppose it was a sign of rebellion. Your parents would never have let you go out with torn clothing.

And it displayed a proletariat streak. Middle-class kids were throwing in their lot with laborers who had come by their holes honestly.

But lately those openings have been growing, distinguished by slits or gashes in the vicinity of the knee, large enough to insert a hand. As well as strategically placed holes at other locations along the garment.

But this trend reached its apotheosis, or nadir, depending on your point of view, a few weeks ago when I spotted a woman who was proudly wearing the most devastated pair of jeans I’d ever seen. (I can’t even remember where I saw her because the spectacle reduced all else, including skyscrapers and street signs, to mere insignificance.)

The pants hardly qualified as clothes, if a requirement is that clothes cover the body—any part of it at all.

There was more thread than jeans, and more flesh than thread. If fabric could talk, hers would have pleaded for reinforcements.

From fully the top of her thighs to her ankles, on both legs, there was nothing but exposed skin.

So I did what I always do when I encounter a cultural trend that makes absolutely no sense.

I consulted my older daughter Lucy and asked for some insight. Because I’d been under the impression that—as during the ’60s—contemporary jeans were coming by their holes organically. At a minimum, they’re the result of their wearers loving them to death.

But Lucy informed me I was mistaken. People were buying their jeans off the rack that way.

She didn’t know much more about it since hers are thankfully holes-free, but she suggested I visit Diesel, a store she were under the impression sold jeans in such dire straits.

So I paid a visit to Diesel’s Lexington Avenue location, where I encountered a sales associate named Juan. He informed me that Diesel indeed sold the garments in question and escorted me to a nearby rack.

“We have a pair of distressed jeans that are about $400,” he told me matter-of-factly.

He apparently detected my surprise at the not-inconsequential price.

“They’re limited edition,” he explained.

And these pants weren’t even mega-distressed. I’d go so far as to describe them as demure. They had the random hole, of course. But most of the major damage had been patched.

“As you decide to break them in, they open up,” he went on, the slits growing ever larger. I believe he even gave the openings a name: the “skin zone.”

Juan helpfully informed me that there are even different styles—for example, the Grupee (pronounced groupie)—though I don’t what would differentiate one style from another. The placement and aperture of the holes?

I shared my sighting of the lady wearing the skintastic jeans. Juan said Diesel doesn’t sell them in anywhere near that decrepit or revealing condition.

“What’s the point of buying $200 to $300 for denim that’s not even there?”

My point exactly.

The salesman went on to speculate how the woman’s pants might have achieved such an advanced state of disrepair. I would have guessed an artillery shell.

“They take sandpaper and wear it down,” he explained. “If you want to get better abrasion, sand down the fabric.”

He also suspected she’d owned them for a long time. “Once you get a pair you like, you’ll hold on to them.”

But I still didn’t understand the allure of wearing clothes that invite a draft.

Is it supposed to be sexy, peek-a-boo?

“A little bit of sexy,” he allowed, “but more edge, rock.”

Juan suggested that if I wanted truly rent garments—I hope he didn’t think I was actually shopping for myself—I should visit Broadway in the vicinity of Bleecker Street.

“They have a lot of denim boutiques,” he informed me. “There, you’ll find a lot more broken down.”

He even suggested there’s a geographic aspect to their state of distress.

“It’s definitely a more below 34th Street kind of thing,” he said. “Not that you can’t see it up here.”