Despite fashion stigma, 'double denim' is here to stay a key trend

Leave it to the Parisians to win the Canadian tuxedo.

Recently on Instagram with a series of street style posts, French photographer Ludovic Pieterson (@thestylearchivist) published a reel titled How People Wear Total Denim in Paris and proved beyond reasonable doubt that a style was in vogue during from the Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge. The tour was back.

Fashion savants, of course, have been proclaiming the return of double denim for some time now, predicting, with the bland assurance of carnival seers, that the future awaits us.

Yet suddenly, look-wise, there was proof: all-denim outfits worn with pops of theme and variation on a classic outfit featuring a denim trucker jacket and blue jeans, captured by Pieterson in seemingly every wash and permutation possible. and silhouette.

Surely the best of them belonged to an anonymous man caught walking on a Right Bank corner, right in the middle of the city's old financial district, wearing aviator sunglasses, a four-pocket indigo jacket that hung down waist-length and some mid-length. -blue jeans so crisp they could probably stand up on their own.

Along with the denim, he wore a white shirt with a spread collar and a neatly tied tie. It was perhaps a Gallic touch too much that he accessorized the look with a baguette tucked under one arm.

The next time the naysayers say that the suit is dead, I'll show them the image, warning that, four centuries after its evolution, the infallible combination of a jacket and pants in fabrics matching seems more vital than ever.

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One thing that time and recent events have altered is our relationship to the formality of traditional dress and, for that matter, to formality itself.

Effortless is the new version of “I don’t care,” stylist Mark Avery said recently from London.

Purposeful but casual, he added, is the logical alternative to the squalor of hoodies and sweatshirts that dominated the early pandemic years.

Hollywood insiders know Avery as the stylist to Ryan Gosling, the man who dressed the barbie star in a pink silk suit and rumpled black Stetson for the Oscars.

He's also someone who's been wearing double denim for decades, a horseless cowboy who serves as a walking advertisement for a style he first fell in love with while watching old westerns on TV.

In London for the filming of Hail Mary ProjectGosling's new film about an astronaut launched into the galaxy on a mission to save a disappearing Earth, Avery had adopted his eye-catching style for a jet-lagged stroll along Portobello Road, dressed like Gene Autry.

Not everyone could wear the battered cowboy hat that Avery sported. As for the denim double suit, he said it's a foolproof formula that anyone can wear.

Celebrities seem to think so, judging by sightings of people as stylistically different as Pamela Anderson, Julianne Moore, and Gigi Hadid, all clad in head-to-toe denim. Designers have also embraced the look, with double jeans almost ubiquitous on the runways of Louis Vuitton, Victoria Beckham, Willy Chavarria and even Chanel.

What I like is that double denim does the same thing as a suit, Avery said.

Even when you do it in denim, it creates this vibe of assembly and intention.

There is something else, Samuel Hine, fashion writer at GQsaid of double denim: With its roots in workwear, it is unambiguously American in its origins and is a corrective to a lot of the more dizzying and sometimes unwearable things that designers create.

This is at least in part a tacit recognition at Chanel, explicit at Louis Vuitton, of values ​​aligned with the needs of new consumers.

Simple utility clothing creates meaningful connections, Hine said.

And like any costume, it's essentially a recipe.

The great thing about double denim, Hine says, is that you don't have to think about it too much.

It's almost true. Given the light years it will take for the horror of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlakes' appearance at the 2001 American Music Awards wearing matching head-to-toe faded jeans to fade from memory, it's clear that, if not styled smartly, double denim can easily veer into cosplay or, even worse, dadcore.

Double denim has always had a stigma, said James Scully, a former modeling agent who this month opened Jamestown Hudson, a multi-brand retail store in Hudson, New York.

We sold a ton of denim jackets and pants in the first two days, he said, referring to labels like RTH, RRL, Samuel Zelig, Transnomadica and Officine Générale.

Obviously, you can go further with double denim than with tracksuits or sweatshirts.

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Has there been anything worse than the sweatshirt trend? Not for Jess Cuevas, a creative director in Los Angeles who worked with Willy Chavarria and designed the artwork for the Madonna Celebration tour.

For me, double denim is a classic, he says. It doesn't matter if it's giant jackets with giant pants, small jackets with big pants, the oversized, wrinkled 501s that are a staple of Chicano culture. You can not be wrong.

In the style lexicon, double denim is a constant, designer Todd Snyder noted last week over lunch in Manhattan.

I've always loved denim on denim, even when it was out.

Regardless, the arbitrariness of the distinctions between input and output seems out of place in an era where designers and consumers draw inspiration freely from a decontextualized trail of Pinterest images.

Anything that is well designed is okay, Snyder said.

How does he style it?

The classic Canadian tuxedo is five-point straight jeans with a trucker jacket, Snyder said. A belt is essential to keep it from looking like a suit. The New York Times