My grandma saw my ripped jeans and we basically had this conversation (rough translation from Swedish + memory):
"Why do you only wear those jeans? I can fix them for you."
"What do you mean fix them?"
"They're ripped, they have the rips. I can get my sewing machine and hem them."
"They're fine, it's okay."
"You shouldn't wear broken clothes."
I was wearing purposefully ripped jeans as in sold for that reason.
If you saw my jeans you'd understand that they're meant to be ripped for the 'style' or whatever. I suppose because it's not the usual rips at the knees (they have small rips on thigh and by the pockets instead) it looks different.
I wonder what she was thinking. She's old, I don't know if she knows about how ripped jeans are a style of fashion. And if she does, I wonder why she phrased it as if to be fixed. And if she doesn't, I wonder why she phrased it in that way anyways.
If she didn't understand it or know about it, the phrasing definitely shows. "Broken clothes" was such a strange expression to me. Obviously, this is a guess, the words aren't right and I'm remembering it in Swedish and then translating and rewording it in English.
The whole concept of ripped jeans just is strange when you think about it for too long, like when you say a word over and over and it starts to sound weird. I wear ripped jeans a lot, my friends can account for that, or at least jeans with small rips in them. I think I only have one pair of the jeans that are "ripped jeans" (with the rips being on the knees).
The style of destructing something on purpose for fashion is such an interesting concept to me. I feel like it just makes some people (me) think about how fashion went from people making everything pristine and proper and then evolving into clothes where people purposefully make them look destroyed for fashion.
Ripped jeans, cutouts on the backs of shirts, holed tights, fraying shorts, etc. A lot of clothes, especially in the grunge/alt style, have a lot of this. I'm assuming it comes from music and stuff like pop art.
Extending from some sort of style of going against things, and then moving down and evolving to where long branches of stores are selling them on purpose. When they're sold, someone (like your grandma) will have a reaction that says it's strange and unusual.
That makes you think about how the jeans you're wearing don't make much sense and even the way they're styled doesn't make much sense.
That the overall style is progressive but often seen as strange to other people (like your grandma).
That the style makes sense to you because we live in a state of world where media is influencing everything, and the same media that influenced someone purposely wearing ripped jeans turned into the same media that influenced you to purposely wear ripped jeans.
I wonder if she'd have used blue or white thread.
