23 Things I Learned About Jeans

and life in 2023.

I started Jane on Jeans this year, and because there is no end to what one can know about denim, 2023 was full of learnings for me. In this, my last letter of the year, I’m reflecting back on some of them and – since life is more than jeans – sharing a bit of what I’ve learned about being a mom, a daughter, and a person independent of others. Writing this list was a meaningful exercise. I hope you find something useful in it.

My dad Ron Herman taught me to love jeans. I’m wearing a pair he made. He’s wearing 3x1. Photographed by Taylor Jewell in New York City, 2014.

Before I get to that, though, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our family business, the Ron Herman stores. In 2019, their ownership passed from my dad to Sazaby League in Japan, and earlier this month the original Los Angeles locations were all closed. I cannot, in this letter, speak to the entirety of what these stores meant to the fashion community – a whole lot, in fact, there’s probably a book to be written (from my Substack to a publisher’s ears) – but I will say this: The Ron Herman stores were home. Not just for me and my family, but for anyone who walked in and stayed a while. To shop. To work. I heard stories of people going to Ron Herman on Melrose straight off the plane. To arrive in L.A., you had to see it. A legendary retail experience that sold California style and the coolest jeans on the planet. My dad – and my mom, who worked alongside him since 1976 – made it so. He was there every day. That is, if he wasn’t on a buying trip or in Japan, which now has more than twenty Ron Herman stores and counting.

The L.A. closings mark the end of an era. People who know my parents or bought clothes from them keep telling me this, and it’s true. I feel the loss deeply, and I am grateful to everyone who helped make the Stores, as we called them in our house, so incredibly special.

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23 for 2023

A list of things I learned, from parenting tricks to travel tips.

1. I will never know everything there is to know about vintage jeans, but I got a lot better at buying them online this year. For Levi’s, the care tag contents are key: Style number, waist size, date, and a 3-digit factory number – also called the button post number since it’s stamped on the top button’s back side, too – can tell us if a jean is actually vintage (more than 30 years old, I’d say) and made in the U.S.A. If a seller can’t share the care tag and won’t accept returns, I recommend passing. These shops are all reliable places to start.

2. Fitting into my pre-pregnancy jeans won’t happen and doesn’t matter. It took two years after having my second (and last) baby to find a pair that truly felt good. This is also how long it took for me to feel creative again, and I don’t believe the timing is a coincidence.

3. The best parenting advice I received: Lead with curiosity. This is gold for dealing with my daughter Georgia, who is five right now. The other night she woke up saying she was scared. Lead with curiosity. What are you afraid of, I asked her? She said she doesn’t like it when her closet door is open. Fair. (I don’t like sleeping with the closet door open, either.) Why not? Monsters (obviously). I looked in the closet. No monsters. “But the giraffe said that sometimes she sees feet poking out from under the door,” Georgia told me. The giraffe talks! Don’t you think that’s scary? “No, no, no. The giraffe talks like you, Mama.” Ohhhhhh. And that’s not scary? “No.” It was a good talk (if a non-sensical one), and eventually Georgia got back to sleep. Kids her age say cool things if you press them with more questions. The same can be true of adults, too. Lead with curiosity. We may all sleep better if we do.

4. When hosting a dinner party at home, especially if it’s a holiday, it is very important to start on time.

5. Esprit, a company I always thought of as being European, was actually started in San Francisco in 1968 by Doug and Susie Tompkins as a line of cheap and cheery dresses called Plain Jane (how unfortunate). Doug rebranded it Esprit after the couple divorced.

6. Paul Simon’s Graceland is still, 37 years after its release, a totally hip and amazing album. Coincidentally, its date – 1986 – aligns with what vintage expert Eric Schrader considers one of the greatest years for Levi’s 501s.

7. KS&Co makes a very good brow gel.

8. At Gucci, Sabato De Sarno believes baggy jeans are still big enough to bet on.

Gucci Fall Winter ‘23 ad campaign. Photographed by David Sims.

9. Most measurements on jeans grade – that is, go up or down – ¼” per size, except for the back pockets, which grade every 2-3 sizes. Reformation’s website is great at listing the inseam and rise on a specific size for a more accurate fit. (This was my best-selling Ref style this year. Size down if you’re debating.)

10. When you have small children, a thermometer and hydrocortisone cream are travel essentials.

11. I returned to in-person yoga classes this fall after logging in to online classes (at times, daily) for more than three years. God, it was nice to be in movement with others. And honestly, what I learned from going is that home practice works. The truths are true no matter where you take your Mountain: Do it and you will feel better. Show up strong on your mat and you will show up strong in the world. Be flexible in your body and you’ll be less rigid in your daily routines. (Except if you have small children, in which case rigid daily routines are life! But then, so is flexibility!) It is wonderful doing yoga with others in real time, but doing yoga alone is no less challenging or effective. It took me finally going back to class to see this.

12. I can wear a jean skirt if it is A-line or knee length with a slit up the back. Longer versions with slits up the front, though lovely, do not support the mom life I live.

13. Thomas Keller’s recipe for Simple Roast Chicken is still the most perfect recipe for roast chicken. I’ve been a fan since 2014. A decade later, it remains a family favorite.

14. Gentle parenting is a trap. Try and you will likely fail. What’s the opposite of gentle? Harsh? I’m not advocating for any sort of harshness in the way we handle our kids (see No. 3; nothing un-gentle about it), but parental decisiveness and firm-but-kind leadership makes my young children feel safe and my husband and I happy (precisely because we can sense that the kids feel safe, and also because caring for them this way feels achievable for us). I continue to consider my own place in the hot and ever-changing landscape of thoughtful American parenting. This article in The New Yorker proved useful. This article in New York Magazine also resonated.

15. Georgia O’Keeffe is a denim icon.

Georgia O’Keeffe photographed by Maria Chabot, 1944.

16. I started wearing belts this year and now I get it: If you are someone who enjoys exquisite bags and shoes, it’s a slippery slope to luxury belts.

17. Good denim shirts do not have work-y button down collars. Thank you, Samira Nasr, for teaching me this.

18. There is a shop on Granville Island in Vancouver, Canada that makes handmade brooms for every occasion: Short-handled Manzanitas for fireplaces; lightweight Dowel Handle Cobwebbers for reaching high up into the rafters; and Turkey Wing-Style Whisks for delicate surfaces. I discovered this place with my husband on a work trip (his). Beautiful brooms make great gifts for house proud friends who have everything.

19. Nine times out of ten, doing my own makeup looks better than when someone else does it for me.

20. Earlier this year, I read Anne Glenconner’s memoir Lady in Waiting and her follow-up Whatever Next?: Lessons from an Unexpected Life. The quiet workings of the royal family, the history of the island of Mustique, the resilience of a mother who has lost children… a grim and great life story. Lady Glenconner is now in her 90s. At every age there is time to write a new chapter.

21. Not time, nor sit-ups, nor diet will bring my abs back from having babies. What helps: Plank. So much plank.

22. Becoming a mother will change you, it will change almost everything, but it will not change your mother.

23. If I put princess gloves on my kids they’ll brush their teeth, happily.

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This newsletter has brought me so much joy and I am thankful to you for reading it. Wishing you and all of your loved ones the happiest, healthiest New Year.

Jane