How To Wear Skinny Jeans When You’re Not Exactly Skinny

‘Whoa! You’re wearing jeans!’ My mate said as she hugged me outside the cafe we were meeting at for lunch.

‘Show me your butt!’

I self consciously sat down and she said ‘You should seriously wear jeans more often they look great on you!’

I kind of nodded and then we started talking about something else. This isn’t the first time someone has told me this. People freak out quite hard when I wear jeans, usually in a good way. The weird thing is, I don’t actually know if I DO look good in jeans or not. I don’t care to be honest, the truth is I FEEL weird in jeans. I’m always very aware that I’m wearing them. It’s not a body image thing, it’s a comfort/emotional thing. I’ve never really liked wearing clothing directly on my waist. I’ve always had a Buddha belly, even when I was a kid and my mum said I’d always push my nappies down so they sat under my little gut. I’m the same now. My underwear has to be bikini style (well below my waist) or high waisted (well above my waist). It just doesn’t feel right have firm waistbands sitting across my stomach. That’s why I’ve always preferred dresses. They’re just easier to deal with. My super long torso is to blame. Imagine a Shetland pony wearing hot pants and that’s kind of the way jeans work on my Dachshund like physique.

I own only one pair and I’ve had them for about a year now. I whip them out every now and then in winter when I feel like I need something a little bit more robust than the pure wool tights I insist on wearing as pants all season.

Wearing

Curve Embracer Hip Hugger Jeans from Jeans West 

Wool wrap thing from Alistair Trung – I bought this years ago, it cost me a fortune and I don’t regret it for a second. You can wear it long or short and wrap it all kinds of different ways. Alistair Trung himself sold it to me by telling me I was like a ‘sensual flower’ and I was like *fumbles frantically for credit card*

Clogs from Funkis – these are pretty much the only shoes I wear. Once you break in clogs they are beyond comfortable. I’m considering getting these ones for winter… to wear with tights what do you think?

Here are my tips for wearing skinny jeans when you’re not exactly skinny…

Note: these are tips that work for me. I’m not trying to hide my muscular thighs and ample rump, just work them to their best advantage. No body shaming here, I promise. Just advice from one chunky legged lass to (maybe) another.

1. Wear boots over them

This is certainly not a style rule, it’s just a thing I do that I think evens me out. I have short, stocky but quite muscular legs so trying to make them look longer is a daily struggle for me. It’s even harder because I’m tall (178cm) people assume I have long legs so when I go into shops to try on jeans, the shop assistants will hand me long length and I have to insist on regular. It’s a whole thing. Anyway, I always feel like if you can see my ankles in skinny jeans, it makes the rest of me look chunkier. So I whack my long boots on over the top and it makes my high school dancer thighs look less like I’ve been squatting with 100kg weights for 6 months. Bonza. It also makes me look like a retired rich country lady who wears expensive vests and has several designer dogs and a forehead that doesn’t move. If I DON’T wear boots, I always wear chunkier shoes like my clogs pictured above. It’s a balance thing.

2. Get a dark colour

I love black but I’m wearing less and less of it because it makes my outfits blend together and I lose a lot of texture and shape when I wear too much black. When I find myself reaching for black, I go for navy or dark blue instead like these jeans. The dark colour covers a multitude of sins like little dimply bits, the fact that I’m wearing my most favourite ever soft cotton Muji undies that show through EVERYTHING and the extra few glasses of wine I had over the weekend. Light coloured jeans just don’t play nicely on me.

3. Wear nude or light shoes

Dark shoes just weigh my whole look down. I also survived the 90s when we all thought it was super stylish to wear chunky black shoes with jeans ALL THE TIME so now I can’t wear black shoes with jeans ever again for the rest of my life. Same with maroon knit jumpers, which is a shame because they’re everywhere this year and maroon is a great colour but if you’re an Aussie Catholic school kid, maroon knit jumpers will be ruined for you for life.

Side note – I was walking around Fitzroy the other day and I took my jumper off and tied it around my waist and quickly snuck a peak for Ms Karapanagos, my year 9 coordinator who I swear could smell a jumper tied around a waist and would promptly dart out from behind a door and give you detention. I always feel guilty for tying my jumper around my waist. As an adult though, I can’t see a logical reason why we weren’t allowed to do this. It didn’t damage the jumpers in any way. Have you ever worn a Catholic school uniform jumper? Those things could survive a nuclear bomb. Was it just that they decided it didn’t look good? I strongly debate that because we didn’t look good anyway and a jumper tied around our waists wasn’t going to change that. Isn’t it funny when you grow up and think about adult enforced rules and you have a light bulb moment and you’re like ‘YES! That rule WAS bullshit! I wasn’t imagining it’. 

Tie jumpers around your waist with gleeful abandon my petals. I won’t give you detention.

4. Get fitted properly 

Due to my aforementioned long torso, I have a hard time find skinny jeans that feel comfortable because I have miles of hip/waist/ribs to contend with. I never quite know where pants are supposed to sit. I wrote recently about this issues and I’ve come to a conclusion. You need to treat jean shopping like you treat bra shopping. Go to a professional and seek their help, they know what they’re doing. I never used to bother getting fitted for bras and now I won’t buy one unless I’ve had a bra specialist properly recommend one. Same with jeans. I would NEVER buy jeans online. Why? The jeans I’m wearing in this post are a size 11. I’m a size 14. There’s no way in HELL I would have ever ordered a size 11 but that’s the way the cookie crumbled with these jeans, which is why I always buy jeans in the store. Anything jersey is fine to buy online and tops are fine too but jeans? No and nope.

5. Get stretch 

This one seems like a no-brainer but for real, avoid jeans that don’t have stretch in them. My tip? Get three-way stretch. This means they stretch in every direction (Like the Jeans West skinny jeans I’m wearing in this post) instead of just sideways or lengthways, resulting in less sagging and bagging. It also means they’re super comfortable and you don’t have to keep adjusting them every time you stand up because they snap back into position.

This outfit was worn for a regular old day of Smaggle-ing. Writing, social-media-ing, so many emails, shooting some stuff for Crochet Coach and doing all kinds of grown-up bank type things. Mr Smaggle and I have been reading lots of finance books so we keep moving our money in and out of accounts for increased interest and that kind of thing. It makes me very tycoony.

Are you a skinny jeans wearer? Do you have any ‘rules’ for yourself when it comes to wearing them?

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