Around a college campus, there is no shortage of denim in the visual landscape. A lazy person’s staple, it is infrequently worn with panache. But as addressed in an earlier post, men can reinvent denim by pairing it with sharper pieces or referencing work wear. As for women, there are two approaches to wearing denim chicly.
The first idea seems obvious, but it is rarely done — treat navy denim as a color in the outfit. That is, think of your palette with a navy-blue base, as if you were wearing navy pants and working around that. Along these lines, I think of a polished older Argentinian diplomat I see at my local Starbucks in D.C. who wears jeans on the weekends with tobacco cowboy boots and a tobacco cocoon coat.
The second way to wear denim is to ignore its casual connotations. This freshman Fashionista took this task by pairing her basic blue jeans with a structured knit coat, an embroidered sheer blouse from Topshop over a T-shirt, an elegant leather belt, and a surprising 1940’s turban hat designed by Cornell sophomore Anu Lingala. The look is relaxed, but still turned out. It is in fact just a T-shirt and jeans, but it is styled on another level.