Wearing my Clothes Out

 By "wearing my clothes out" I don't mean wearing my clothes when I leave the house, but rather, wearing them until they fall apart and become rags.  It's not something I've ever actually done before because usually my clothes start to look unattractive after a while, don't fit right, or I'm just sick of looking at them.  I'm proud to say though, that I currently have a pair of jeans that I've owned for about ten years, and that I'm still wearing so often they're getting holes which I have then been mending.

It's all very World War II homefront i.e. re-purposing things, making clothes last, doing without, washing your hair with borax... oh wait. Except not really, because I'm still buying far, far too many pretty dresses like this one.  For some reason though, I am invested in these jeans.  When I wear them, I not only think I look good, but I can admire my own craftsmanship.

Home-done hemming!  Now my pants are the right length!

They look pretty good for being ten years old

To date I have hemmed these jeans, added a hook and eye closure to the zipper area because it would gap and I didn't like that, and repaired holes that are slowly appearing in the crotch-ish area (which I'm not taking a picture of because I tried, and every one looked... odd and somehow provocative).

It's also nice to have a pair of jeans that are actually distressed instead of artfully distressed.  And no one was hurt in the distressing of my jeans.

I read once, and I think Gloria Steinem said this, but I'm not sure, but it was something like "I'm not going to have plastic surgery when I get older because I'm curious what I'll wind up looking like." Well, that's how I feel about these jeans--how far can I go with them?  I imaging one day I'll wake up and say to myself, "The grunge look is long dead, and these jeans have gone from distressed to grungy--cut the cord."  We'll see how long that takes.