Wednesday 3 June 2009

THE JEGGING, PART TWO

It might interest you to know that my highest visitor numbers are for my post on the jegging. Certainly it's fairly disappointing that my lovingly crafted sketchbooks, inspirational and authoritative trends and wistful musings on vintage Americana are passed over in favour of knitted jeans-look leggings. I'm sure jeans themselves feel the same way.

However, I have decided to bow to popular demand and give a run-down of the current available jeggings from the UK, including styling & fabric composition. I am not sure which are the best fitting, but I do know that I haven't seen that many pairs on the street that look good, apart from yesterday when a girl was wearing what appeared to be a woven jegging with orange jeans stitching where there are normally pockets & seams. They looked pretty cool, but I think it's because a woven fabric just looks a bit cooler anyway, there's some wash effects at the seams etc.

I am also willing to bet that the UK is the world centre of the jegging. It's just that we love the combination of trendy and unflattering that this trend seems to promise.

Your decision is basically between a woven fabric (a super stretchy lightweight denim) 'pull on' jean, or a legging made with denim-look jersey. I would council people to go for a super-stretchy woven fabric rather than a knitted denim-look jersey, if only because the denim jerseys look really hairy, and you know you are going to look back on it with that awful sinking feeling of regret you get when remembering past fashion mistakes.

But what I think would be best is maybe a dark denim jersey with some kind of resin or cire coating, to give a edgy cross between the leather-look legging and the denim-look legging (hey, I say edgy, others say terrifying mutant cross breed). I think the coating would add a bit more structure to the jersey and you'd start to get the 'fashion wrinkles' that make jeans so flattering.

Anyway:

Asos has the 'Kate' jegging, which are pretty much all
85% cotton, 13% polyester, 2% elastane. There are a couple (grey & printed) which are 98% cotton, 2% elastane. I am going to go out on a limb and say they are made from woven fabric, based on what I can tell from the zoom.
They do them in black, indigo, vintage blue, grey, acid wash, cropped length and printed with roses.

TopShop.
They have a printed jean-look legging, which is an acid wash look, like a photographic transfer of a jean, and made, interestingly, out of slinky viscose:
94% Viscose,6% Elastane. Their denim-look leggings are jersey, and 96% Cotton,4% Elastane. Dare I call these the classic jegging? They also have something called an Indigo knitted Tregging, 85% Cotton,10% Polyester,5% Elastane, with back pockets.

River Island, Urban Outfitters - both good places to go, both have good websites, forgive me if I've run out of steam a bit with picture editing. We'll save that for the third update.

1 comment:

  1. I agree that it's depressing you have the most hits on this item, but thank you anyway for your always wonderful posts.

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