Patched! ‘I’m feeling o insecure about skinny jeans - please help’

Patched is a new members-only series where people can write to me with a fashion (or fashion-adjacent) question that's bothering them, and I will reply with a 300-400 word letter from an anti-capitalist perspective. You can read the second letter below.

I have chosen the title Patched as reminder for me that at this critical time we need repair and regeneration as well as analysis. I will keep unpicking and unravelling the fashion industry but with Patched I want to make space to explore mending - solutions to both personal and structural problems, occasionally with the aid of expert witnesses.

Patched

Is there something you would like to ask? Email me DearPatched@proton.me

Dear Patched, I know skinny jeans were supposedly 'cancelled' a while back but I still wear them and I like them. I was totally fine with this but then I overheard a group of teenagers on a train talking about skinny jeans as being 'basic' - I'm in my mid thirties, happy and considered successful but I was embarrassed to get up and walk past when it was my stop as yes, I was wearing skinny jeans. Do I get rid of my jeans, or ignore them and also why is this bothering me so much?

Thanks from J.M., Brighton, UK.

Hi J.M.,

Thank you for your letter.

Fashion is marketed as happiness, self-expression and empowerment, but there is a flip side: Threat. On the train, you met the threat. The fashion stick as opposed to the fashion carrot.

Fashion consumption is a social activity and these teenagers were unwittingly acting as the fashion police – scolding anyone who could hear their conversation and giving voice to fashion’s threat of getting left behind and being outcast or punished. Even the perfectly natural process of ageing is used as a threat instead of a celebration. All of this as gendered as the term ‘basic’.

French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote about prisoners internalising strict rules when their cells are built in such a way that they always feel watched - a useful means for understanding the social practice of fashion consumption. To counteract prison cells and police we need to push back on the absurdity of the fashion industry and question where do narratives like cancelling clothing styles come from and who do they benefit?

Diktats on what people could/couldn’t wear were once extremely rigid, but we've lived through the splintering of clothing into a wealth of subcultures. Celebrating variety and difference is not, however, good news for the fashion industry – fashion columnists need to keep their jobs by writing that clothing styles are ‘cancelled’, designers have to chase profits, and corporations to please their shareholders by beating other corporations.

My question for you is are these corporate narratives really what we should listen to? Does their world view match ours? Do the objectives of 'cancelling clothes' align with the future we want to see? Or can we recognise that the fashion system has been set up to take our money and make us feel like failures, and that it’s an act of resistance to reject and disrupt it.

It's not just about how we feel either. I guarantee that every charity shop in Britain has spent the past few years swamped with skinny jeans because of profit's reliance on trends. Millions of pairs will have been exported to the Global South to become a massive social and environmental problem – it is worth continuing to proudly wear your skinny jeans as an act of resistance against this exploitation alone.

If you want to experiment, DIY a pair to make them wide-legged (shout out to my Mum who did this for me in the late 1990’s). Here’s a video tutorial, or join a local sewing and mending club to make more friends into the bargain.

Enjoy your happiness and success. You are not your jeans.

In solidarity, Tansy.

I would love to hear your questions: DearPatched@proton.me Include the name you want your question published under and your town or country. I pledge to protect your identity.

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p.s. Special announcement for my UK folk - https://ranaplaza-solidarity.org/ is back and this is happening: