Everyone and their nan are parroting the same damn cliché at this point; Fashion works in twenty year cycles, the denim jacket is “back”/”due a rest” whichever influencer your algorithm has trapped inside your brain this week. It’s treated like some kind of tide table, coming in for a few years then out for a few years and you’re supposed to schedule your wardrobe around it like you’re planning a ferry route. I hate that framework. Been saying it years before ponting was cool.
Mine came from a car boot outside Blantyre about eleven years ago now; an old Levi’s Type 3 that some poor guy’s ex wife was chucking out of a box labelled “MENS, £2 EACH” and I nearly didn’t bother opening because there was another box next to it with nicer coats on top. Buyer’s remorse doesn’t exist at car boots, though. The woman running that stall, who I still buy scraps off most months and has never known my name in eleven years of buying things off her, just shrugged when I asked if it came with a backstory. “Somebody’s dads probably” was the most legitimate provenance anybody’s ever given me. I’ve moved through three flats, broken up with two exes, one horrific home dye-job that discoloured the cuff in blue splodges that I refuse to stitch out since then and I still wear that bitch all god damn year regardless of forecast fashion spreads.
Whether it works with your life, not if it’s “in”
The first thing that matters, and nobody wants to talk about it because it’s boring compared to trends, is does a denim jacket actually work with how you spend a week. Mine does because Glasgow weather resides firmly in that shitty not warm enough to wear not cold enough to bundle up under layer months for roughly eight of them. A denim jacket is the only thing that fills that need without you looking like you’ve put on a jacket meant for an entirely different season/weather combination. That isn’t trend based, that’s a “what the fuck do I put on my body at 8am when it’s chucking it down but not raining cats and dogs” decision and it’s been that since well before I was born and will stay true when some brands zodiac decides denim needs “revitalised” yet again.
I think people mistake trend cycles as usefulness because they occasionally overlap and when they do everybody tries to claim credit from the trend side. Denim jackets don’t become more useful when they’re on a runway, just like they don’t become less useful when some high street stockist decides it’s “finished” for a year and tries to convince you that by only stocking uppers (I’m looking at you River Island). What actually makes or breaks whether something earns its keep on your hook by the door are boring little questions. Does it layer over jumpers without looking like you’ve been padded? Does it look lived in after being sat on a pub floor cause there was nowhere else to put it? Can you hang one shoulder when it’s too warm to zip up but too nice to leave at home? Mine ticks all those boxes cause it’s a few too big for me, sized enough that it was a fluke when I bought it and gamechanging once I realised it also fits a hoodie underneath.
On top of that, denim jackets, as opposed to almost every other “trend piece” cliché out there, do not look stupid at any point in the last sixty years of photography. Pull up old photos at any point, any decade, and I bet you money someone in the background has one on. It doesn’t look like it’s from that decade, it just looks like someone wearing a jacket. That’s honestly fucking rare and it’s what the trend cycle arguments completely fails to account for; that cycle works under the assumption every single thing ages like jeans do, like shoulders pads do. Fast and in very obvious, noticeable ways. Denim jackets just don’t.
The cut doesn’t change that much over twenty years. What changes is how tight people are wearing them that year. And honestly that’s such minute detail I don’t think about it when I’m dressing half the time.
Does YOUR denim jacket have something to say?
The second is arguably more important than people give credit for; your denim jacket itself needs something to say because a brand new off-the-rack jacket doesn’t speak like one that’s lived near you for years, wrinkles and all. If you’re anything like me. I spent a long time feeling guilty when I realised mine had. I say that as someone who broke that ethos and bought a fresh new one at some point too. Needed it in a rush one day when mine was in the wash, went toPrimark of all places because I ran out of time, and it sat uncomfortably on me all night. Clung weird at the shoulder in a way that literally had me standing differently. It felt like I was wearing someone else’s jacket and it took me about four washes to stop feeling like that, by which point I’d neglected mine for two weeks through feeling like a sass.
By “say something”, I don’t just mean leave it that vaguely tweearkinly vintage shirt that it knows who wore it before you know. Understandable, humanliketrue, as well. Wear patterns on jackets that suit you show you where you go; the collar softs where your bag hangs, the cuffs lighter where the sun hits most during your commute home, pocket bags pushed out slightly on your keys side. They learn from you. Things you buy off-the peg just sitting in stores learn nothing of your life. wears atrolley becomes sodden with the sweat of nowhere in particular. Hangs on hooks by people who asked when it’ll be fashionable next. It’s why I think asking “is it trendy?” Is the whole point. Treat every denim jacket as a unique being that your version of it mic that mould the second it gets inked into your daily routine.
So nah, I’ll never check whether mine is acceptable to wear right now according to some people with far too much power over our generation’s clothing taste. Eleven years and a dodgy dye-job later and it’s not getting tossed out with the trend babies. It gets worn cause it does one job better than almost everything else I own, sure. But it also gets worn because it knows me, knows my Tumblr password and generally has more history woven into the stitching than half the coats I’ve owned since. Trends can swing whatever. Mine’s hanging here till further notice.
