Mood Jeans
Things I'm feeling and feeling for right now.
In my last letter I said I’d be taking a break this week to work on what’s coming soon from my clothing line. You know the saying, Remember why you started? I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, looking back at the images I’ve loved over the years in order to reconnect with what I’m trying to say now, both in this letter and through the pieces I’ve designed. (I’ll share more about them soon, but hint: There’s denim, shocker!).
I’ve also been thinking about my life with jeans. If you’re new to this letter and don’t already know, I was born to a family that had great jeans. My dad, Ron Herman, owned stores in Los Angeles that were famous for them. I have core memories of the kids’ Chipies he’d bring me back from his buying trips to Paris; even at five or six, I knew they were special. Later, as a teenager, I wore low-rise Sevens and stood behind the Jean Bar at our store on Melrose Avenue helping people buy Diesels, Earls, and Frankie B.’s. At my first job interview in New York in the summer of 2001 – I was a student at NYU applying for an internship in New York Magazine’s fashion department – I kept the years I spent selling clothes at my family’s stores off my resume because I wanted to get hired on my own merit, not my family’s association with fashion. This sounds ridiculous to me now because I was genuinely a very hard worker and helping women find jeans to go with the Chloe blouses they’d just bought upstairs at Ron Herman was legit merit. But I was young. Twenty-one and insistent on doing things my way. I got the job at New York, I think because my love for clothes and magazines showed, and I showed up. Like I said, very hard worker.
“I don’t know any nudists,” is what my mentor and friend Sally Singer has said in response to those who doubt the importance of clothes in our lives. Even if they aren’t, as they have been for me, the family business (and by degrees, the business of family), clothes hold value. We need them. And the ones that makes us feel good we need even more.
I wish I had more photographs from that time in my early twenties in New York. I know I wore vintage Levi’s 517s, Jane Mayle tops, and anything Dries Van Noten that was my size from the Ron Herman sales. I wore bedazzled hoodies under an original Helmut Lang jean jacket, the one with the wide cuffs that I still have and will never get rid of. I dated a musician and lived downtown and dreamed of making a living doing what I love: Writing and working with clothes. It was so simple. It is still so simple when I think about it now.
Jane
More to read…
Men’s Jeans: According to me and some really cool men.
The Expert’s Jeans: When designers want denim, she’s who they call.
Redline Jeans: Some say selvage, and I like selvedge. Potato, potahto.
I just love Sally Singer’s quote — and couldn’t agree more with getting back to your why … and the value of clothes in our lives. When I read things like this I get inspired to continue to pitch my fashion essay collection with its tales of love, loss, working in fashion and finding myself — all told through what I wore. Low slung 7’s in the early aughts with “going out tops” from Theory, every cash register accompanied by a rainbow of hanky panky’s, working at Calvin during Francisco’s reign and loving every feminine, chic design he created. Look forward to seeing what your line does next!
Oh man. My obsession with 7 jeans was real. I was 22 (2002) and had just started physical therapy school and saw the sign in Nordstrom in Kansas City. They just looked cool. And different. To say the excitement that I felt when I put them on was something I’d never experienced is an understatement. And I think it was the most I’d ever spent on an item of clothing, like $98 if I recall correctly. My already very present denim obsession grew exponentially that day, as did my credit card bills… 😑