Olivia Singer gave up on denim in her teens - but can the season's glamorous new attitude persuade her to give jeans another go? Portraits by Jonathan Daniel Pryce
It was during the early Noughties that I last wore a pair of jeans: an obscenely low-slung pair from Miss Sixty that pulled perfectly taut across my bony teenage hips. Then, as is the way with growing up, my body changed: my prepubescent proportions transformed into a bum and thighs, and I no longer looked like Christina Aguilera when I wriggled into them. I read magazines that compared my developing body to a fruit bowl, disappointedly determined that I was a pear, and would burst into tears when I tried on new styles in Topshop. There is no experience worse for fostering teenage insecurity than hot, brightly lit cubicles and a £25 pair of stretch jeans. So, I gave up denim for good.
Once every few years I'd convince myself to try jeans again but, no matter my age or confidence, the outcome was always the same: I'd be overwhelmed by how different my body looked in them to what I'd imagined, and leave the changing room desolate and empty-handed. Even when Vetements' reworked Levi's exploded into ubiquity, I simply reassured myself that I was never going to be a jeans-and-T-shirt girl. I have curves and I am not effortless in my wardrobe: I don't wear flats and that's fine. I'm not going to put myself through torture when I could just go to Celine.
But then, this season, denim came back with a different attitude: stiff, dark and sharply tailored, it felt covetable. I braced myself and went straight to Selfridges - its denim floor holds over 700 options. A wonderful saleswoman patiently led me around and, after trying 50 or 60 pairs (yes, really) whose sizes bore no parity to one another, I found a couple of options: a high-waisted, deep blue style from Diesel and a great pair from Ksenia Schnaider which fitted like trousers. ("They're not really jeans, but you're getting some-where," remarked my shopping companion.)
Then I accidentally tried on a pair that made me look like a Kardashian — they were designed by Khloe, it turns out — and that overwhelming feeling of teenage insecurity resurfaced. Why was I trying to be someone I am not? I am never going to be a denim-wearing woman, skinny-legged and in possession of drawers of pristine white T-shirts and shelves filled with trainers.
So, I went to Chanel — always cheering — and found a stiff-cut pair of deep blue, cropped carpenters, which I wore with a bodysuit and black courts. I went to MM6 and found a comically wide-legged, high-waisted pair that quite closely resembled a skirt: I paired them with an oversized Celine shirt and giant Margiela platforms and they made me feel fabulous. Then, I finally went to see a woman called Anna Foster, who does bespoke fitting of upcycled denim through her brand, ELV. We met in the velvet-curtained changing rooms at Alex Eagle, and she encouraged me to try on endless pairs of well-worn vintage until we found some that fitted over my thighs without clinging to them. She made me laugh as she pinned and pulled and tucked them around me. A week later, the altered pair arrived. I slipped into them without discomfort — or tears. "It's about staying true to your style and just switching the bottom half," she reassured and finally, after 15 years and hundreds of pairs, it hit me. I don't need to look like a girl on the Versace runway; just like myself, only wearing jeans.
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