SUTS True Shopping Story: Denim in Distress

I have never been a fan of spending money on new clothes that look like they have been passed down through a family for generations or like they were the victim of a freak washing machine disaster. I despise shirts in stores like Abercrombie and Hollister with their "fashionable" holes in the collar and fraying hemlines and their obscene prices. I have never worn a pair of ripped jeans...until yesterday.

You must have noticed by now that the hottest denim trend is light denim destroyed in one of a variety of ways, be it rips in the knees, paint splatters, bleaching, or sometimes, oddly enough, tie dyeing. the style has been seen on a range of celebrities (e.g. Lala and bff Kim Kardashian) Unfortunately, some designers seem to get a little too happy with the razor blade and we end up with what I like to call fringe jeans which are about 2/3 less than a full pair of jeans in my consideration. See Taylor Momsen:

Anyway, I digress.

Now this is a very trendy trend. By that I mean the shelf life is very short and as such should be bought at a low low price despite what the good people at Balmain seem to think. So in order to try my hand at this trend I ventured to one of my favourite disposable clothing establishments. I was excited to find denim in a wide range of distress. Like the examples below, the jeans ranged from mildly-stuck-in-an-elevator-for-7-minutes-distressed (read a darker wash denim with minimal small holes in the thigh) to utter-oh-my-god-why-did-these-oxygen-masks-jus-drop-down-in-the-middle-of-my-transatlantic-flight-distress (read light acid wash denim complete with ripping throughout, bleaching and paint splatters). I opted for moderate distress, a very light denim wash with horizontal rips in the thigh and knee.

I should have known things were not going to go well when the first thing I proceeded to do was insert mih big toe straight into one of the holes in the jeans as I tried them on.

After I finished laughing at myself, I surveyed myself in the mirror. Hmm, not bad. Unfortunately my work blouse was kinda killin the funkiness so I headed back to the racks to find a top to try the jeans on with.

Steups. Why could I not find a damn ting?

Red flags started going off in my head. Obviously if out of all the cute trendy tops on the sales floor I could find nothing to pair the jeans with, when faced with the options in my much more limited cloest there would be even less. I am notorious for my impluse buys which end up languishing in the bottom of my 'new clothes bag' for months (sometimes years as was the fate of the moss green glittery crochet halter top) never having any partner to be paired with because it really doesn't fit in with my personal style, no matter how cute it looked on the mannequin. I didn't want this to happen to the skinny distressed jeans.

I liked them. I didn't love them. So I left them.

I may revisit them in future, who knows. However I don't want to discourage you from trying these funky jeans. Look through these options (I tried to arrange them in order of distress and devastation). Which do you prefer?



Tidbits:
1. Review of the MSquared collection!

2. Kanye praises paparazzi photojournalism!

3. Ghetto clip of a hot video.