I’m calling this blog Dream Jeans…or it could be How to Live Clean, Lean, Green, and Fit in Your Jeans. I’ve mentioned my new friend Kami Gray several in several blogs, including this review of her book The Denim Diet That will explain the clean, lean and green. As for the how to fit in your jeans, well, Kami and I finally got to go jean-shopping today. She converted me.I am not a shopping kind of girl. Probably rebellion against my mother’s proclivity to shop for eight hours at a time. Before she disowned me about twenty years ago (she didn’t like that I changed my name back to my birth name, Diana Page Jordan, from my stepfather’s multi-syllabic, hyper-sybilant last name), before that, she would fly out three-thousand miles and take me to Nordstrom’s, spending easily a thousand bucks each visit on clothes for me. An embarrassment of riches. I shop more like a man — need something for a couple of months, until I desperately need that item of clothing and go to one store, try on a few things, and a half hour later, I leave with that one thing. I admit to a bit of a poverty consciousness — which I am working on – “think plenty” – so I have never spent more than forty-dollars on a pair of jeans, even when my mother was paying.
Which is why I have about ten pair of jeans, collected over the last twenty years, that fit but look dated. I brought four pair today to donate to Nolita in downtown Portland, where I met up with Kami. It was 95-degrees, hot for Portland, and I felt fat today, and didn’t really want to try on jeans, but we’ve had this set up for a few days.
Kami held up a few pair, and I went into the dressing room to try them on. The first pair was okay. I put on another pair of jeans — sleek, dark, sophisticated — and slipped on my Wild Diva three-inch heels, and Kami said “yes.” And, Katy, who works at Nolita, said “yes.” I stepped in front of the three-way mirror. Holy crap! How did those jeans make my butt look that good? Kami says “You buy good jeans, they’re tailored beautifully, by people who know patterns and fabric. Cheap jeans just can’t look great.”
Did I mention that Kami dresses actors for TV commercials and movies? Lord have mercy, the woman knows style!
I tried on another pair of jeans, these more casual. OMG. Now I have to buy two pair of jeans, each more expensive than I’ve ever even considered — nearly $400 together. I sit, I stand, both jeans feel like a second skin. I feel like I can live in these jeans. There’s a sale on, and Katy credits me for donating my old jeans, so the total for two pair will be $250. But! I always go with cost-per-wearing. A pair of forty-dollar jeans I never wear is a lot more expensive than a $125 pair that I wear a few times a week, every week. And I plan on it.
As we walk out of the store, Kami flashes her warm, brilliant smile and says “You’ve just been upgraded — you’re never going back!”
There’s a sense that that old poverty consciousness has slipped away.
Listen to Kami Gray with me on Open Book with Diana Page Jordan, my Monday noon Pacific show — she’s fun and fabulous!
