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Butch Furse
I’ve always been late when it comes to keeping up with fashion. I’m sure to many of you this comes as no new news. In fact, some believe I never was in fashion anytime, no matter how late.
I can recall when in my youth I would get a new pair of jeans that were dark blue and worn only to school. When I came home I must change into an old faded pair with embarrassing holes in the knees and frazzled pant legs. I couldn’t wait until my new Levis’ or Lee’s jeans were washed enough times to fade the dark blue to light denim and had shrunk to fit.
Later, times changed for me as well as for the jean market. Jeans became pre-shrunk and I didn’t have to follow protocol where we had initially purchased one size bigger jeans and washed them shrink to fit. It also meant a couple girls in our class no longer sat in the bathtub in their new jeans to make sure their jeans did shrink to fit snug in just the “right spots.”
A couple of decades later I found my old discarded holey jeans should have been saved. Jean-makers began manufacturing pre-faded jeans with holes in them and selling them for super high fashion prices.
Now that my “second childhood” has long passed, I have two pair of faded jeans with a few holes, oil and paint stains. I wear them only when painting or doing messy chores that could ruin a good pair. Just like as in my school days, I also have an unblemished good pair of jeans (no holes, but light blue) that I’m comfortable wearing outside our home.
It figures! Just as I caught up with these minor fashion adjustments, the jean industry has announced another fashion jump. A major manufacturer is beginning to market jeans with grass stains on the legs.
Looks like I’ll miss that grass stained fashion change. Since my other two personal fashion changes from dark blue to faded jeans and holy jeans took me nearly five decades to complete, I just can’t imagine with my reluctance to new fashionwear by purchasing jeans with grass stains – the very stains my mother years ago always scolded me for.
On the other hand, I might be able to acceptable for that new grass stain style as a gift on my 100th birthday.
RL Furse is publisher emeritus of the News-Register
