Just a girl after her perfect partner
Helping Kate recover from a denim breakup!
I feel like a plonker. Here I am, a fashion writer of some years, and I've only just discovered a pair of jeans that suits me.
I love jeans. They're the thing I most want to wear at the weekend, at work, on the school run, but my relationship with them, which has been going for some decades, has been a bad one, akin to going out with someone you adore but who just isn't right for you. I was never entirely happy with the style and the cut, never entirely comfortable.
In recent times I'd been wearing boyfriend jeans by Paige and Gap . They were all right, I thought, but after a photo-shoot too painful to talk about I had to call the whole thing off. There is nothing like seeing an untouched digital image of yourself shot under bright lights against a white backdrop to realise how unlike Daria Werbowy you look in jeans. What was I thinking? Why didn't one of you have a word? The boyfriend and I were O.V.E.R. Jeans and I were over.
Naturally, I was depressed. There was a hole in my wardrobe. I could cope without jeans while I was at work but, oh, the weekends… This dark period lasted about a fortnight when, out of the blue, I got an email from Donna Ida Thornton, the founder of the Donna Ida denim boutiques . It was if the denim world had issued an alert ("Agent Ida, we're losing one! Make immediate contact. Repeat: make immediate contact!"). Would I like to meet, she asked.
Well, if there's one person you can go to in a jeans crisis it's Donna. Her legend precedes her. Why hadn't I thought of her before? She and her assistant took one look at me and found me a pair from her own brand, IDA. Skinny, cropped, two sizes smaller than I've been wearing all this time with - and this is the key - a high waist that sits on my true waist rather than at my hips or up somewhere near my ribs. They are leg-lengthening, slimming and exactly the right waist height for tucking in a shirt - love at first try. The style is called Mabel . Seems what I needed all this time was a girlfriend.
There was a hole in my wardrobe. I could cope without jeans while I was at work but, oh, the weekends… This dark period lasted about a fortnight when, out of the blue, I got an email from Donna Ida Thornton, the founder of the Donna Ida denim boutiques . It was if the denim world had issued an alert ("Agent Ida, we're losing one! Make immediate contact. Repeat: make immediate contact!"). Would I like to meet, she asked.
make immediate contact!"). Would I like to meet, she asked.
Well, if there's one person you can go to in a jeans crisis it's Donna. Her legend precedes her. Why hadn't I thought of her before? She and her assistant took one look at me and found me a pair from her own brand, IDA. Skinny, cropped, two sizes smaller than I've been wearing all this time with - and this is the key - a high waist that sits on my true waist rather than at my hips or up somewhere near my ribs. They are leg-lengthening, slimming and exactly the right waist height for tucking in a shirt - love at first try. The style is called Mabel . Seems what I needed all this time was a girlfriend.
Kate Finnigan
10th November, 2013.
Telegraph UK.