When you shop for jeans you’ve got to consider 5 things:
Fit around the waist.
Make sure they are not too loose on the waist, so it doesn’t gape at the back when you bend, or even standing straight. This one is very easy to alter.
If the difference between your hips and waistline is significant, and you find that all the jeans seem to be too wide at the waist when they are the correct width on the hips, take them to the seamstress and they will easily adjust it for you. Go for the size which works for your hips.
Image from Pinterest
2. fit around the hips.
If the jeans are too tight around the hips they will have horizontal lines on the front around the hip area. Again, better to buy the next size up so it fits on the hips and alter the waist if that’s too loose.
MARKS & SPENCER
3. Vertical length from the waist to the crotch.
Here is where you’d need to try different lengths.
Sometimes jeans will come in 3 lengths:
Short, regular and long. They do that in M&S.
Sometimes the length will differ between 27-35. Like in Levi’s.
When the brand does different length of jeans, it’s not just about the length of your leg but also about the distance between the waist and the crotch. For some people that distance is longer, for others it’s shorter.
If you are petite it doesn’t always mean that you should automatically go for a short length in jeans. If the distance between the crotch and the waist in your case is long, going for a regular length and then altering the length of the jeans is a better idea.
And vice versa, if the distance between your waistline and the crotch is short but you are relatively tall, you still might want to opt for a shorter length, otherwise the jeans will bunch up around the hips.
MARKS & SPENCER
4. The length of the jeans.
The specialised denim brands will have different lengths. Some high street brands, Like M&S and Whistle will do 3 different lengths too: Short, Regular, Long. Please keep in mind that in a lot of cases you would still need to alter the length as even if you opt for short, it might still be too long. It should become a second nature to you to try things on and consider if they need to be altered.
TIP: Ask your seamstress or tailor to cut the bottom off with the distressed part of the jeans and reattach it after altering the length. That way the distressed look fo the jeans will remain unchanged.
5. Your body shape.
As a rule of thumb, if your hips are wider than your waist, go for high-rise jeans. If you’ve got a small difference between waist and hips and your torso is relatively straight, go for lower cut jeans. Experiment with tucking your tops into your jeans with high rise and practice french half-tuck or leave the top out with lower rise jeans.
Massimo Dutti (low-rise) & MARKS & SPENCER (high-rise)
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