CULT BUY: The $30 jeans every tall woman needs to know about.

Content note: This post is not sponsored, I just really bloody love these jeans. (Really, really.)

As a woman who goes through life feeling (and looking) like a very awkward, very uncoordinated tree, jeans shopping has always been tricky.

Nearing 180cm in height, every pair of jeans I yank onto my legs end up looking like 3/4 length cut-offs. Both of my sisters, Evelyn and Claire, experience the same problem… it’s kinda like trying to fit a giraffe into a sock.

You see, tall women are outcasts, existing on the fringes of Jeans Society, longing for the warm embrace of fabric on our calve/ankle area.

So at 23, I had all but admitted jeans defeat, and resigned myself to a life with chilly cankles.

Until Claire, bless her lanky soul, told me a piece of information that would change my life forevermore.

“The $30 jeans at H&M,” she whispered into my ear during an episode of Masterchef one night. “You will never look back.”

“You idiot,” I hissed while Matt Preston pondered the complexities of grilled halloumi. “$30 jeans would be so flimsy they’d disintegrate into my skin.”

Oh, how wrong past Michelle was.

LISTEN: “No skinny jeans after 47” a completely unhelpful fashion study says. (Post continues…)

The next day I found myself walking past H&M, and marched straight towards the jeans section to eye off the ‘DIVIDED Super Skinny High Waist’ jeans.

“$30,” I mouthed, slowly. “Thiiiiirtyyyyyy Dollaaaaaaars.” I squinted, looked behind my shoulder, then back to the jeans again. “Thirty. Dollars.”

I’ve spent more on shitty burgers at suburban restaurants. $30 seemed too good. And considering H&M was recently listed as one of the world’s most ethical companies, I was CONVINCED that I was being short-changed on quality. I mean, I’m not daft (unless we’re talking about geography… then I am very daft, but that’s a whole other issue).

I squinted at the price tag some more, and inspected the fabric. The stitching. The… smell.

I can confirm: they felt, looked, and… smelt … like ordinary jeans; and no, not like the $400 jeans you would find in Sass & Bide, but a lot like the ones I’d paid $109.95 for online 10 months prior. (Currently at the bottom of my floordrobe… too short.)

Okay, so real talk, the material was thin and stretchy, but in a good I-could-eat-a-heap-of-dumplings-in-one-sitting-without-unbuttoning kinda way.

Hmmmm.

I hauled them into the change room and slid them on.

They weren’t only LONG ENOUGH… they might have even been a touch TOO LONG. I could CUFF THEM IF I WANTED, YOU GUYS.

They were a great fit. Tight, but not too tight. High enough to conceal my belly button. Stretchy enough to put my shoes on without plummeting into the mirror and suffering a concussion.

I had tapped into a wizardly underbelly of the jeans world, you guys, one that made my cankles feel warm and loved and special! I basically moonwalked to the register and flashed my Westpac debit card with the confidence of a white male real estate agent.

That was over two weeks ago.

Not only have my $30 black skinny jeans braved the frosty temperatures of Bendigo for Groovin' The Moo music festival, they've survived me wearing them day in, day out for the last fortnight with no sign of stretching around the waist or vanishing into thin air.

Basically, they're bloody brilliant.

I'm under no illusion these bad boys will last a full year, but for such a low price point, and great fit? I don't really care.

I'll just buy another when they die. Hell, I might even buy two.

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