133: Blessed be the pants

How to wear the Bless draped jeans three ways.

Jul 30, 2023

I’ve been sitting on these jeans for a few weeks now, having accidentally designated them a “fashion week piece”—the easiest way to kill a great item you’ve just acquired and also your personal style, all in one go.

Aside from wearing the designer to the designer (if you have it), I’m cruising up to the conclusion that fashion-week style should be completely in step with your every-other-day style. Same goes for the reverse: Any occasion is an occasion to dress to your own cool and assert first-hand your perspective on the way things should or could look.

But back to the jeans. These ones are by Bless, a subversive Euro operation that works very intentionally toward the ugly or extreme, inevitably creating some sublime things along the way. That one could describe these reworked Levi’s with a single beaded, ballgown-like leg as being among the tamer of the label’s creations makes sense when you see, say, its front-only jumpsuit “scarf” or coiffure cap.

Bless draped jeans, $363 ~~$955~~ / Uniqlo U t-shirt, $20 / vintage Bottega Veneta Intrecciato hobo bag, $1,245 / Jil Sander boots, $358 / Agmes x Simone Bodmer Turner earrings, $370

It’s like, jeans and a t-shirt. Tantalizingly normal and rule-abiding as far as outfits go, save for that ream of denim billowing with every step. Jeans can truly do so much that it offers a nice resting place for the mind seeing them strung up in a familiar sequence, in this case with vague Westernisms like tall boots (Jil) and a woven leather bag (Bottega). You could almost imagine this with a big shiny belt buckle riffing off the silver earrings if, again, not for the all-the-jazz-you-need leg sleeve.

Bless draped jeans, $363 ~~$955~~ / Dries Van Noten top, $549 ~~$915~~ / Janessa Leone Everyday bag, $530 / Maison Margiela tabi flats, $690

This Dries top that I may have tried to pawn off on you here weeks ago and then succumbed to myself may be the soulmate to these deconstructed and reconstructed jeans, being made of little more than tied-together bits of torn chiffon and crocheted rope. It can feel so good wearing things that seem on the verge of being nothing at all—very freeing! In a way, though, with its open back and flirty little frills, it’s also technically a “going” “out” “top,” so I thought it best to ground things with a casual tabi flat and a not-too-fussy bag.

Bless draped jeans, $363 ~~$955~~ / Puppets and Puppets swirl polo, $158 ~~$395~~ / Martiniano silver glove heels, $538 (on sale here) / Acne Studios oilcloth bag, $360 ~~$500~~

Of all the looks I sketched out around these jeans, this is the one you’d put on the milk carton if I ever went missing—it feels most me, not least of which because I get to wear the Martiniano heels I’ve been practically sleeping in since spring. This outfit is a summit of heady pieces with sardonic celebratory edge (sparkly polo!), like the snobby bespectacled goth at the senior year party who ends up getting a little nerd action on. A total Janeane Garofalo-Lizzy Caplan of outfits. Take from that what you will about what I was like in high school.

There’s a pair left of these at the women’s section on SSENSE as well as a couple in the men’s, plus one at MNZ, but if they sell out or you have another flavor in mind, I could see any of the above also working with: a simpler yet satisfyingly wide pair from RAEY, a fold-over pair from The Row, these pleated Goldsign ones, or any others from Bless, even the shorts.