Can You Be Too Old for a Jean Jacket?

Observing Sarah Palin in her denim jacket designed me recall that the jean jacket has been a wardrobe staple. Ever more, even though, my options to major an outfit are softer and fewer built, and my once ubiquitous denim jackets hold unworn in the back again of my closet. Do you imagine this is simply because of the pandemic, or have I just outgrown them? Is there an age limit to jean jackets? Should really I preserve them, or enable them go to make room for anything else? — Patricia, San Diego

While the pandemic did indeed briefly solid a shadow in excess of denims (and with them, jean jackets), that cloud has mostly dispersed. In January, Levi’s documented a 29 p.c progress in web revenues in 2021, and reported the upward craze was anticipated to continue on.

So if you are even now feeling conflicted about your denims jackets, it may possibly have a lot less to do with two decades of ease and comfort dressing and more to do with a thornier issue that my mates and I examine all the time: Just mainly because you can continue to put on a specified style or garment as you age — just because it nonetheless suits — does not signify you should.

But how do you know when the time has come to retire a a lot-loved product? When, to place it one more way, have you outgrown it — not literally but potentially psychologically and culturally?

The fact that most policies about what to have on when have mainly absent out the window is equally a liberating enhancement and a recipe for confusion. And it has developed a lot more challenging amid the discussion about accountable use, and the awareness that keeping on to a garment and donning it in excess of and in excess of is much more attractive than believing it’s meant to be changed. Which militates against retiring an object to the dust heap, or recycling pile, of historical past.

Which provides me to denim jackets!

A denim jacket is a ceremony of passage an important symbol of awesome, of revolt, of rock ’n’ roll, of democracy. It’s just one that can get trapped in your possess particular timeline, endlessly related with a you of a precise moment in the previous. (Clothes, like madeleines, serve as shortcuts to memory.)

But it is also a really beneficial garment: best for transitional climate and so simple that it goes with almost every little thing. That doesn’t truly alter more than time. What should transform is how you have on it.

As Glenn Martens, the innovative director of Diesel and hence some thing of a denim skilled, claimed when I requested what he believed: “Denim has this distinctive high quality of remaining absolutely transversal. The notion of the actual exact garment will transform relying on what you pair it with.”

When Sarah Palin, as you say, appeared in a pale denims jacket above a black turtleneck and darker jeans at her libel trial in opposition to The New York Times, the act seemed calculated to underscore her placement as a private citizen (nevertheless the choose ruled towards her). When Michelle Obama wore a double-layer denim jacket by Alexander McQueen with skinny black jeans and a T-shirt at a college signing day in 2018, the search the two related her to pupils and, with its significant manner edge, set her apart. And when Jenna Lyons appeared in a buttoned-up shrunken denim jacket and shocking pink satin skirt at the Met Gala in 2012, it was the final significant/low statement.

All of which is to say: Indeed, resurrect your denim jackets. And then mix and match to make some thing new.

Your Model Thoughts, Answered

Each individual week on Open up Thread, Vanessa will solution a reader’s trend-connected issue, which you can send out to her at any time by using e mail or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.