Roll up roll up….

Or don’t, as the case may be. I’m talking about men and the trend for rolling up their already skinny, tapered jean.

I know this has been around for a while, seen first on the Milan and Paris catwalks and slowly filtering down ever since. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that on a recent visit to Westfield shopping centre in London (the Mac store – the only reason to ever ever go there) I noticed they were absolutely everywhere but on the most unlikely of candidates. If I’m really truly honest, I sort of liked it. I liked the confidence with which it was worn and the tight neatness of the roll, more than the fashion itself perhaps. The hilarity came from the shock and total incomprehension shown by my husband who was the first to spot the many male ankles surrounding him. “Why would you do that?” he kept saying as he pushed his way through in his twisted, loose, rolled down, Levis. Which I would like to go on record as saying , I like much much more than the male skinny jean. Especially when it’s on my husband.

What did confuse me about all the ankle exposure wasn’t so much the style of jean (very tapered) worn with the espadrille pump (an understandable shoe choice) but it was the person wearing said ensemble. They weren’t fashion types, they were groups of twenty and thirty something boys (men) who just didn’t strike me as tapered jean wearers. They were more loose and lager than skinny and sushi. And then, to my husband’s complete horror, the particular group we were following and observing, took a sharp right turn and went in to Topman. “What are they doing???” he exclaimed, a little too loudly. Maybe we should just put it down to being a generation divide. I think it’s safe to say he will never roll up his jeans, thank goodness, I on the other hand just popped to the village shop in a pair of rolled up PPQ skinnies and my black and white brogues and it felt pretty darn good.

The men in Westfield did not look anything like this.  Just thought that was worth mentioning.