What Happened to Embroidered Jeans?

I was a teen in the early 2000s and, call it nostalgia if you will, but I can't help recalling the fashions of that decade with a heavy longing. So many of my favourite stomping grounds for clothes back then no longer exist - Etam and Dorothy Perkins have long vanished from the high street and it is difficult to see what has replaced them, at least in my neck of the woods. The old Etam store is now a Starbucks, the former home of Dorothy Perkins now a charity shop.

Back in the day, I was in and out of those places on a weekly basis. Checking out the latest goodies, dismissing those I had already seen and figured were not for me. Like any teenage girl I had a lot of clothes, and I especially had a lot of jeans.

I pretty much wore nothing but jeans in the 2000s. It was my thing. I don't believe I had a pair of ordinary trousers in my wardrobe, though I did have a handful of skirts (several in denim, naturally). Looking back, I can see I have a tendency to latch onto an idea and run with it. These days it is garish leggings, (my 2000s self would be cringing into the flared sleeves of her gypsy top). I have no illusions that my fashion sense is rapidly deteriorating as I age!

Still I hanker after one very specific thing from the 2000s, an item of clothing I thought would never cease to exist, it was so commonplace.

I am referring to embroidered or decorated jeans. Jeans that had sequins down the legs, or different colour velvet ribbon around the cuff. Jeans with flowers and butterflies swirling up them, or studded glass gemstones lining the pockets (they were hell when you got your lacy cardigan sleeve snagged in them!). Quite frankly, back in the day, I was a walking embroidery display, shedding sequins and velvet fluff wherever I walked.

(Remember how that velvet stuff used to shed? I had an evening outfit of matching trousers and top in black velvet and wherever I sat I left a smudge of tiny black fibres. It took weeks for my parents to get it out of the car seat fabric! Not to mention how it stuck to my skin and made it look like I had a very weird medical condition!)

Every time I went into the shops I would spy a new patterned pair of jeans and I had to have them. I ended up with quite a collection and I was happy - my jeans were so pretty and interesting. I thought it would always be this way, that jeans would always be decorated.

And then the 2000s ended.

I am not sure when it all happened. It just seemed that one day I walked into the shops and there were no more embroidered jeans. I looked and looked, but they were gone. In their place were dull, plain jeans. What had happened? The joy had gone out of my jeans!

Slowly, my pairs of decorated jeans wore out and with each passing pair that I saluted with a fond farewell as they descended into the rubbish bin, I felt a mounting horror that they could not be replaced.

Here we are, another decade later and I no longer have a single pair of pretty jeans. In fact, I have grown tired with how boring jeans are and have made the switch to those jazzy leggings I mentioned earlier. Jeans are no longer creative or exciting, they are just another means of covering up your legs in cold weather.

Oh, I know if I scour the internet I could find some pairs of jeans with decoration and pay a small fortune along the way, but I miss those days when I walked into a shop and ten pairs of jeans with different decorative patterns called to me. I could try them on and see which suited me best, something that is lacking in internet shopping.

But I want embroidered jeans back and I want them now! I want to kick up my heels and smile at the pretty patterns - and then curse as I walk through a muddy puddle. Perhaps it is just nostalgia, perhaps it is just the memory of a different time, a different me, when I was younger and did not have adult responsibilities, but I really miss those jeans.

Isn't it about time jeans had another facelift and became joyful again?