ICYMI: Here’s Part 1 on the history of women in trousers, and why we can’t stop believing in the “perfect jeans” myth, Part 2 on fatphobia and the fit industrial complex, and Part 3 on what straight-sized designers just don’t get. You’ll find the entire series here.
OK, Jeans Science fans. You have been extremely patient while I made us all learn the history of trousers, and pattern grading and how globalization has ruined denim manufacturing. I think we’re all better for it, too? But this installment is the installment you have been waiting for: I’m going to tell you which jeans I kept of the 60+ I tried. And, which jeans I actually wear.
Before we get there, I need to circle back to where we started in Part 1 of this series: If you are still looking for the perfect jeans, that unicorn does not exist.
American jeans brands are failing American consumers across the board. And they are especially failing fat consumers. There are many complicated reasons for this, and quite a few of them are rooted in fatphobia. And yet: we keep buying, and hoping, and returning, and buying more. Because we can’t stop believing in a myth that is ostensibly about the “perfect jean,” but also about the bodies we think we should have.
I realize now that when I started this project, I hadn’t even fully articulated to myself what I meant by the “perfect jeans.” I thought I’d know them when I saw them, but I also did know, if you know what I mean. I wanted a pair of jeans in a medium-to-dark denim wash that didn’t cut into my waist and didn’t stretch out after one wearing or need to be hiked up every time I changed position, and that had a skinny leg. Because of the many limitations of denim and fashion design, no pair of jeans check all of those boxes for my particular body. That doesn’t mean no pair of jeans will check those boxes for your body, but it probably does mean that if they do, you are thin. You also may have a list of different priorities for jeans. Maybe you care more about the specificity of your denim wash, or the weight of the fabric, and less about the leg cut. Identifying your own list of criteria is certainly a useful exercise if you’re about to embark on a jeans-shopping mission (or any kind of shopping mission). You can then tune down the noise on everything that really isn’t even a contender. (See: Pantaboots.)
But we also have to spend a minute interrogating those criteria, because what we want out of a pair of jeans is a social construction, after all. When I first tried a “cropped straight leg” instead of a “skinny leg,” I posted on Instagram that I did not understand how to wear them with winter shoes. Everyone explained that the key is to roll your straight leg jeans so they sit just ABOVE your ankle boots. Readers sent in visuals like this one and this one, and if you’re noticing the common variable in those photos, you know where we’re going with this. The non-boot option requires one to live in California, where you can wear cropped jeans sockless, with sandals, low sneakers, loafers, or clogs all year round. I thought this made a certain kind of sense, but was annoyed for those of us in USDA Zone 6 and colder. And then Corinne (who you all know as the creator of @SellTradePlus and who also works on this newsletter with me), slid into my DMs with this revelation: “What is the problem with wearing straight or wider jeans with whatever normal shoes or boots you wear in the winter without rolling them up?” she wrote. “My theory has always been that people think showing your ankle (whether it’s bare or covered in scrunched socks) is somehow supposed to appear more slimming! Or more feminine. I suspect men don’t worry about this.”
Oh. Right. I thought I was hanging onto the skinny jean dream because I’m a 40-year-old millennial who also still likes a side part. But this is also about the social currency of skinny ankles. So much of what we’re taught about fat fashion is that it should distract from our fatness by emphasizing our thinner parts: The waist if you’re an hourglass fat; the legs (and ankles) if you’re an apple fat. Those expectations are fatphobic, to be clear. But they’re also unrealistic given the current limitations of plus size fashion design. Jeans that fit skinny ankles don’t tend to stay up on fat stomachs. And as I’ve said so many times during this series: That’s a technological failing. It is not your body’s fault.
I’m not saying anyone needs to stop wearing skinny jeans. I haven’t stopped wearing skinny jeans. And there is plenty of anti-fat bias to unpack in the marketing of straight, straight cropped, or wide-leg jeans too: Think how often brands show them (and other oversized clothes) on skinny models, as if the only way to make big clothes look good is to drape them over a tiny body. But: It feels important to notice when our goals around clothes are really just about making our bodies seem smaller. And to ask why and whether that serves anyone.
The other part of releasing ourselves from the “perfect jeans” goal is: We get to decide which part of imperfect we’re willing to accept. I’ve heard from many folks who say, actually, hiking up jeans doesn’t bother them all that much. Or have I heard of belts.1 Real life is not a photo on Instagram, so yes, fabric shifts and bunches and we can maybe just adjust and keep living. But maybe hiking up jeans is the bane of your existence; maybe it triggers memories of wearing too small clothes as a kid, or because you were too broke to replace them, maybe it makes you focus overly much on a part of your body that you’re still working to love or feel neutral about. In that case, I am here to say: It’s time to let those skinnies go. Jeans that fit loosely through the leg are going to have a much easier time staying put on your waist.
I Know, I Know, You Want The Jeans
This is a list of jeans that meet some but not all of my criteria, which may not be your criteria, and which also may not fit your unique body or stand up to the rigors of your life. I honestly debated whether to even share this list because I feel so strongly that the real answer here is that all the jeans are bad. And they will continue to be bad until the fashion industry makes some profound changes about how they design and manufacture plus size clothes. Since doing this project, I’m finding that I wear leggings more often and that I’m getting excited for elastic-waist shorts season, and generally feeling ready to have a less jeans-centric relationship with clothes. But I also, oddly, like all of these jeans a little bit more now that I no longer expect them to be better than they are.
Also: I am linking to every specific jeans for you, but these are not affiliate links; I was not gifted any of these jeans and Burnt Toast is, rather deliberately, nobody’s idea of good sponsored content. I bought and returned every pair with my own credit card hanging in the balance. (And that means I’m also not responsible for whether brands are sold out in these styles or sizes by the time you click a link. I know, it’s very annoying when that happens!)
Yes, these are the same fucking jeans I have been buying once or twice a year since I was a size 31. (Always wait for a sale, they will go on sale.) If I wear them every day for an entire season, my thighs rub holes in each inseam. They start to stretch after two or three wears and do require adjustments. And yet. This wash is the color of denim in my heart and the waist does not cut in (which makes no sense when I consult their size chart). On the first day out of the wash, these fit like true Millennial Mom Skinnies, by day two or three, they are more like a straight leg and yes, I roll them above my clog boots. They will never be everything I want them to be (so much waist hiking!) but I guess I’ll be buying these jeans till I die.
These are the jeans I was wearing ON MY BODY when I decided to start Jeans Science, because they were okay but I was sure there was something better out there. Yes there is a life lesson in there. But now I understand that Universal Standard is one of the few truly size-inclusive brands making jeans right now, so even though their denim isn’t perfect, I’m happy to support them. My only real complaint about these jeans is the inseam length, which on my 5’5” frame is bordering on capri length. So yes, I have bought them in the 32” inseam too, and that one is too long, but trust me when I say inseam length is the easiest jean fit issue to solve. I will get them hemmed eventually and in the meantime, have a very specific list of shoes they work with, which unfortunately makes neither of these my every day jeans at the moment, but I believe in their potential. (They do start out tight, and then stretch and need hiking up after the first wear.)
These were the fifth pair of jeans I tried way back on day four of this journey, and the first that both I and my Instagram followers got excited about. Liverpool jeans are very stretchy — I’m not even sure you can call this fabric denim? It’s more like a legging with a denim topcoat, as I described here. But they also have quite good recovery, meaning I didn’t have to constantly adjust these for the first several months I wore them. The cost: When they come out of the wash, the waist is a smidge tight. They don’t sag, but I find myself waist-adjusting out of discomfort which is clearly not better. I was okay with it for a while and now… idk. I’m reaching for them less. I’m not sure if it’s the waist or the aesthetic of this very dark (and lightweight) denim, which sometimes feels more like a Going Out Jean than I want or need in my life of Going Nowhere Much.
So after I unpacked the internalized fatphobia of skinny jeans up top you are SURELY NOTING that the first three pairs of jeans on this list are skinny jeans. I’m working on it. And these Gap jeans are helping. They are very comfortable. They require minimal waist-hiking. And the reason is obviously that they are straight-legged jeans. My calves are no longer exerting a gravitational pull on my waistband and yes, it’s nice to wear pants that don’t fight with my body. I imagine this is what it’s like to be a thin white man, just all the time, wearing clothes but also in your whole life? I’ll admit, I am still figuring out how to style this style without getting too caught up in skinny ankles. But I appreciate that it’s almost always possible to get Gap jeans on sale, so they are a low-cost way to try this trend.
Ironically, these Gap jeans are the least size-inclusive brand I kept; I’m in the second-largest size. And, these jeans do stretch out after a wearing or two, and go from straight leg to wide-leg-bordering-on-pajamas. Somehow this matters less when I’m not looking for a tailored aesthetic to begin with, but it is hard to imagine wearing them, like, out to dinner? I am also annoyed that the photo on the website makes them look much slimmer than they are; I suspect this is a failure of pattern grading, because Dacy Gillespie of Mindful Closet tried them in a smaller size and the leg looked much slimmer on her too. (But she found they stretched after one wearing and returned! YMMV! Remember, all the jeans are bad!).
Runner Up: Target’s Ava & Viv Jeans
I didn’t end up keeping any of the Ava & Viv jeans I tried, though I came close with a straight leg no longer on the website (until I decided the Gap style had a more comfortable waist). But I really appreciate that this line was created by fat designers and that they offer a good mix of denim trends at an affordable price point. I’m very aware of the privilege involved in listing out a bunch of $60-$135 jeans and wanted to make sure I give Ava & Viv their due.
Jeans Science Rejects
Here’s a list of all the other brands I tried during this project (in most cases, I tried multiple styles from each brand). In case I haven’t already made it clear: The brands and styles that worked for me are not necessarily the same brands and styles that will work for you. Both because of body diversity and because retail fashion is notoriously unreliable! Designs get retired constantly and even when they don’t, fabric suppliers change, designers get hired or fired, and a jean sold under the same name next season may be an entirely different pair of pants.
If you want to know more about why these jeans didn’t work for me, I saved reviews of any that were good enough to test with a day’s worth of wearing in my Instagram Highlights: Here’s Part 1 and Part 2. If you don’t see a review there, it means these were an immediate rejection, right out of the box.
Eloquii
Good American
Kut From The Kloth
Lasso
NYDJ
Old Navy
Torrid
Warp & Weft
Wit & Wisdom
Where Do We Go From Here?
I warned you that this last installment would be a depressing one. The jeans are bad, and also our intentions with the jeans are sometimes bad. I’m extremely not thrilled that after all this research, I ended up keeping jeans from Madewell (a brand that markets size inclusivity without doing the work to back that up) and the Gap (a brand that has yet to even attempt size inclusivity). And I’m also not delighted to know that I haven’t solved jeans for myself or anyone else. But, at least we do now have this deeper understanding of how incredibly fatphobic and flawed the fashion industry really is?
In their Articles of Interest series, the 99% Invisible Podcast did some excellent reporting on the environmental toll of jeans, in particular, and that news isn’t great, either. And several of you have raised the valid concern that this kind of bulk buying and returning has a significant environmental cost (something Dacy and I discussed in this conversation.) The take away for the (thin) hosts of 99% Invisible was that we should buy fewer pairs of higher quality jeans and wear them as long as we can before replacing them. But that advice doesn’t work when they don’t carry your size in most brick and mortar stores. Or when the expensive jeans fail just as quickly as the cheap ones. Or when bodies change. Which all bodies do.
The next time I need jeans (because these four will inevitably wear out, fall apart in the wash, or stop fitting) I’m going to have to repeat some version of this process all over again. It won’t be 60 jeans, but it will probably be 10 or 15. And maybe two will work in some of the ways I need. We deserve a better system than this in so many ways. But at least now we know who to blame.
I have! I hate them! Carry on.
It is oddly comforting to see my lifelong loathing of jeans justified like this.
I loved this whole series from beginning to end, and I learned a LOT. I'm thin (and I better understand the privilege of that every single week thanks to you, Virginia), and I too hate jeans with the fire of a thousand suns.
(My current strategy is to repair the ones I already own, many of which I've had for a decade, which I realize is not only not feasible for many people because of changing bodies and/or lack of mending skills, but also isn't a long, long-term plan for me, either, because eventually, even the best denim breaks down. I've taken to buying all my jeans at Goodwill, which has a surprising range of brands and sizes and washes and cuts and what have you. The return policy at Goodwill is usually seven days so I have to be organized about bringing home my armload of jeans, trying them on, keeping one pair if I'm really lucky, and then getting myself back to the story before the return window closes, but so far, so good. And if I end up hating the jeans a little while later, I've spent pocket change on them compared to buying them new, I've lessened the environmental impact by saving those jeans from a landfill and not having had them shipped... it's not a perfect system, and at least some of it depends on my being thin, but it's working for me, for the moment.)