How Ginuwine's "In Those Jeans" Song Inspired My Love For Denim
You can never go wrong with denim.
In the 8th grade, the RnB singer Ginuwine came out with a song titled “In Those Jeans.” It was probably too grown-up for me to be listening to at the age of 13, but I did (#yolo).
What stood out to me most were the brand names:
“Don't get alarmed 'cause I don't mean no harm
But I love the way you wear those jeans
Levi's, Prada, Baby Phat, I love them
Love the way you wearing them I love them, yeah
Calvin, Iceberg, Sergio, I love them
Trying to get inside of those
Yeah yeah yeah”
At 13, I’d heard of Levi’s, Prada, Baby Phat and Calvin, but Iceberg and Sergio were unfamiliar. The internet wasn't a big thing in my household then (my mother hated me tying up the phone lines) so I began to look at the magazines we had around the house: The Source, Vibe, and Ebony. Each month, I'd look through the magazines to see what the rappers were wearing in the shoots or what new denim ads would be in the front of the magazine.
My mother was not going to spend over $300 on pants, so I started checking for other brands that were affordable like Tommy Hilfiger, Gap, Ecko, Sean John, Pepe Jeans and Guess. I even knew some of the women's brands, like Ecko Red and Apple Bottoms, because my best friends wore them. Growing up in Los Angeles in the 90s and early 2000s, RnB and hip-hop heavily influenced how I dressed. My mother would take me shopping every weekend to get new outfits for school, even when I had to wear uniforms. I guess she wanted me to look good on the weekends. (Actually, I know she did because I was not allowed to wear sweatpants outside.) She took inspiration from music videos, too: for 5 years, all I wore were Fubu, Southpole, True Religion, Phat Farm, Drunken Monkey, and 501 Levis. Whatever you saw rappers and male singers wearing, I had a variation in my closet.
Now that I work in fashion, that's still the way I look at denim, and some of the jeans I've seen lately on the runway seem to be inspired by those same music videos, too.
