Ultimate generation gap is all in the jeans

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

There was a time when a hole in the knee of your trousers meant it was time to either throw them out, find a patch or simply die of mortification – but now you can actually buy them that way.

And not for the first time, fashion has me flummoxed.

I understand that trends, by their very nature, meaning moving on from something old to something new, and by their nature those who form these sartorial trends aren’t aiming at a fifty-something father who hasn’t been in fashion since John Paul was the Pope.

But even allowing for that, it has to be hats off to the genius who decided that the way forward was to rip jeans to shreds.

‘Rockstar jeans’ may well be a natural follow-on from what was apparently known as distressed denim, where their balled-up, non-ironed appearance was a virtue rather than an embarrassment.

Before that it was stone-washed, which was fine but then turned out to be just the thin end of the wedge – now it’s all ripped, blasted, wrecked and ultimately destroyed, in many ways undoing the old boast of Levi Strauss that his product was indestructible.

And I’ll also admit that I’m anal enough to always iron jeans; that I could never imagine wearing a pair straight out of the dryer – but even those who don’t admit such traditional habits surely see that cutting the knees to bits is a step too far.

I could live with small rips on the knees – although it should be through wear and tear rather than self-inflicted.

But there are versions of these shredded denims that now seem to have more missing than left – knees, thighs and other bits exposed to wind and rain – and all in the name of cutting edge.

The obvious next step has to be jumpers and shorts with big tears at the elbows, or woollen wear that looks like it was previously a playground for moths; shoes that let the water in and hats that have a giant hole on the top.

The good news here has to be for those people who cannot afford to keep up with these changing fashions – all they now need is a sharp pair of scissors or perhaps just a cheese grater, and their tired old winter wardrobe is literally transformed into cutting edge.

Part of it may be a generational thing of course; you may want to wear denim but you don’t want to look like your dad does at weekends.

Denim used to signify rebellion – even back in our disco days, you couldn’t get into a nightclub with jeans on – but now they come in enough shapes and sizes to accommodate all ages.

Which is why the younger generation had to find some way of standing out from the oldies – hence the grungy, shredded look which, to the rest of us, looks like sartorial sabotage.

But fashion is a bit like music – if we like it, the kids won’t.

And God help them, in an effort to distance themselves from their forefathers, they have to go so far in the other direction that they soon meet themselves on the way back.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.