THE JEAN GENIE

Sarah-Kate finally ditches her denim dream

For many years, unlike other women, I found shopping for clothes to be torture. I’m tall, a weird shape that tends to go up and down (more like in and out), and I have big feet. Mostly, my shopping expeditions were an exercise in scouring the racks for something – anything – that fitted, then buying it, whether it looked OK or not.

Doing that for an hour will suck the life force from your soul. Doing it for a day or a weekend? Was a time when I’d rather re-sit University Entrance physics than put myself through that again.

But about five years ago, something deep inside me, something vital to the very way I saw myself, changed – I lost my desire to find the perfect pair of jeans.

I’d been looking for decades without success. Heavens, a perfect stranger in a jean shop changing area once piped up with, “Honey, they do nothing for you,” as I was checking out my butt in the mirror.

Bootlegs, no. Skinny, nah. Low-riding, ew. I thought boyfriend jeans would be my saviour, but in fact, I just end up looking like someone’s boyfriend. The trouble is that the bits of me that stick out are in the wrong order. My bottom looks like a pancake and my puku looks like it’s full of pancakes. Actually, I’d probably have better luck wearing jeans backwards.

Instead, after lamenting yet another depressing womp-womp in a sweaty cubicle heaped with discarded denim, the long-suffering Ginger one day suggested that I just don’t wear jeans.

Do you know, that had never occurred to me.

Everyone else wears jeans! But maybe everyone else has more fun looking for them. I was not having fun and not dressing very well, so something had to give.

And as soon as I switched to capri pants and chinos, I started finding clothes that actually fit. And the fit, as it turns out, is the thing. That’s when your threads look good and feel good too. I’m not entirely sure I knew that could happen. But it does. Then I discovered a way to really inject some joy back into shopping – I started forcing the Ginger to come along with me, so he could tell me what did nothing for me instead of hearing it from someone I don’t know’s mother.

This system works well on two accounts: The Ginger loathes women’s clothing stores so operates very quickly, even going as far as picking things out and delivering them to the changing room for me to speed things up. And if I find something I really like, he insists I buy two.

This is not because he wants me to be happy – it’s because he never wants to go back to that shop again– but I end up being happy anyway so it’s win-win. Plus, I always take him for lunch and feed him some beer.

This Ginger Assist Shopping Technique has really turned my wardrobe around for the better.