RIPPED JEANS AND SNAKES AROUND THE NECK

Ripped jeans - £45 from Top Shop
(Three times the cost of whole ones at M&S) 

My partner fell over and ripped her jeans the other day.  Very fashionable, I consoled her.  We both come from a generation that wears jeans for practical purposes – decorating, gardening and other jobs around the house in my case, looking after her horses in her case – and we tend to buy them cheaply (£15 for my latest ones from Marks and Spencer).  For us a rip in the jeans is a sign that they should be replaced, for more fashion conscious wearers a sign that they should be purchased. 

I first became aware of the trend when the footballer Christiano Ronaldo was pictured wearing jeans with holes while his then teammate at Manchester United, Wayne Rooney, was wearing a suit at an event held to honour the former player at their club Bobby Charlton, who would never be seen in public wearing jeans of any type, ripped or whole.  The savvy young continental player did not need to bother with things like suits and ties when honouring an older one, while the more conventional and conservative British one did.

Nowadays it is almost impossible to take a journey on the London Underground without sitting opposite someone – usually a woman around half my age – exposing flesh through jeans.  Sometimes it is a few square inches, at other times quite a considerable acreage.  How is it that a feature which not so long ago would have made a garment unsellable has now become virtually a prerequisite of purchase?  We buy and wear clothes to demonstrate who we are – or maybe who we want to be.  As we get farther away from manual labour, we want to look more and more like workers.  Occasionally you see an actual labourer in the tube and they will usually be wearing unripped trousers, tears being potentially dangerous.  They will probably also have a tool bag strapped to or sitting next to them, a sure sign that they are on their to or from actual physical work.

Maybe it is to do with sex, partially exposed flesh being an indication that this body might be available to the right person, a promise of barely hidden treasures.  Although the fashion seems to be on the way out now, it was recently quite common for young and - let's admit it - black men to expose their boxer shorts above the line of jeans which drooped down their legs.  What did this show?  That they could afford to buy a fashionable brand of underwear, the name of which was conveniently; that it was a short step to what lay barely hidden below; or – and this was the ‘official’ explanation given – that they identified with the black prisoners in American jails who were not allowed to wear belts so found that their trousers dropping down involuntarily? 

The issue is fraught with racial dynamics and dangers.  In my fiction writing days, I once wrote a story in which a female character compared the modesty of young Moslem women, who would not expose even their hair let alone their undergarments to anyone but their husbands, and young men who exposed their underwear to all and sundry as though they were ready for sex with anyone at any time.  I was ticked off for this by a writing judge who said I ought to be more careful about racial sensitivities.   It seemed to me that it was just the sort of thing a young woman in tune with clothing and fashion might say but it appears you cannot even imagine a fictional character making this kind of comment these days.

At the same time as we are trying to look like the workmen we are not, we are refusing to dress like the office workers we are – or used to be.  I have a weakness for a neck tie but usually only wear one when I am going to work as it seems like a mark of respect to those you are working for to dress properly for them and, as a man, you simply have not finished dressing until you have put that tie around your neck and done it up.  On one level this is, I know, ridiculous as most workplaces do not demand a tie these days and it serves no practical purpose to wear one.  They are even banned in hospitals now as they are considered germ-carriers. So why half strangle yourself with a snake around your neck, as one tie-hater put it?  Because leaving that top button undone and uncovered shows that you cannot be bothered to complete the process you started when you began covering your flesh.  I would feel faintly ridiculous wearing one to anything other than the most formal social occasion but I have a decent collection of ties and, rather than let them rot, I wear them as a sign that I am operating in a professional capacity.  So, tie on means money being earned while tie off means money being spent.

Ties used to be tribal, adorned with the symbols that indicated which school or regiment you had been a member of.  Now they are individual, patterned in a way that gives you the opportunity to be dandyish.  I have a weakness for Liberty patterns, which can be almost witty in their detail without descending into irritating whimsy or gimmickry, ties with pictures on them which you wear once but never again.  (It is hard to be taken seriously wearing a tie with Homer Simpson or the Beatles over you belly.)  As I work less the opportunity to wear a tie is diminishing, which Is in itself a shame.  I could put one on to write this piece but would frankly feel like a prat wearing one unnecessarily.  We are more subject ot the pressures of fashion than we often realise or acknowledge.

I have not yet bought a pair of ripped jeans.  There would be little to see through the rips except hairy legs and varicose veins, nothing to persuade a passer-by that were great treasures beneath the denim.  If there is one thing more embarrassing than dressing too formally it is dressing too fashionably.  Maybe this is why I am baffled by ripped jeans.  I am just too old to look cool in them.  I will stick to that snake around my neck. 

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

Apologies for the late posting of this essay.

Edwin Lerner