All That Fading Was Information
The crease across the knee. The patch of white at the inner thigh where the fabric gave up. The hem that dragged on pavement for two years before you finally cut it. Denim records you in a way no other fabric bothers with—every other material launders back to neutral, while denim holds the argument, the concert, the summer you’d rather not explain.
Which is why the contempt for it has always seemed wrong to me. A certain corner of fashion writing treats blue jeans as surrender—the mark of someone who stopped caring, the workwear of the unambitious, lower middle class, no surprises. But that reading mistakes the canvas for the finished work. Denim’s plainness is the point. It absorbs whatever you put into it.
The 90s workwear revival that’s been building for a few years now leans into this. Hammer loops, contrast stitching, wide flared legs—the visual grammar of people who actually used their clothes rather than displayed them. Swedish brand Monki put out a denim collection that takes the functional aesthetic seriously: different washes in vintage blue, washed lilac, mustard, and a natural ecru that reads almost raw. A palette that signals choice rather than default.
The styling—cropped tops, denim overalls in place of the little black dress, bucket hats, fabric scrunchies—is unapologetically 90s, and I won’t pretend there isn’t something nostalgia-drunk about it. But the workwear thread cuts against pure retro sentiment. It insists the clothes do something. Hammer loops on a flared pair of jeans aren’t functional anymore—they’re a quotation from something that was, a citation of labor. Fashion has always been quotation. At least this one knows where it’s borrowing from.
My oldest pair of jeans I’ve had for something like eight years. They don’t fit correctly anymore, not in the way they did. But they fit correctly for someone I remember being—which is maybe why I still have them, stuffed in the back of the wardrobe, waiting for a version of me that’s probably not coming back.