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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jester47" data-source="post: 2032173" data-attributes="member: 2238">ripped jeans and saggin (aka, the providence of Grunge)I remember the ripped jeans era (ahh the early ninties... I kind of miss those days...  Fall 91 wow what a time to be starting high school...).  As I recall, it started when the jeans just wore out.  At least thats how it went originally.  You would have your favorite jeans and one day you would stick them in the washer and tada! the knees were gone because you wore them out from sitting and standing too much.  Or maybe you ripped them on somthing and just didn't care cause it was below mid thigh.  When the knees disentigrated too much, away went the pants, and you got new unripped ones.  This lasted until about 94-95 when people just started ripping them on purpose (or worse, buying them ripped).Now at some point before people started tearing up perfectly good jeans on purpose some hot girl in the process of making "daisy dukes" cut in the wrong spot and had an epiphany.  She realised that if she put a cut in her jeans lust below the right but cheek (but not so high that you could see her underwear, she might get even more attention than if she were to wear the "daisy dukes" because there would only be a hint of what she had to offer.  It would work like cleavage and breasts, enough for a hint, but they would never see anything important (which is what really makes men look at breasts).  I remember this because it drove me crazy.  Any girl that combined this tight jeans, darker makeup, unpermed-but-cared-for hair, a black body suit, doc martens, and a flannel shirt was unstoppable in my book.  But then people started tearing jeans on purpose on purpose.  And it stopped being fun.  just as 1964-1967 turned into 1968-1974, so 1991-1994 turned into the utter derivative mess that was 1995-2001.  Laid back, chill and slightly angry got turned into some kind of crusade of amped up, noisy, rage that just wouldn't stop.  At the same time, sagging was starting.  Baggy was in right about summer 93.  It hit a big point there.  Jncos, and others were on their way up.  Previous to about 95-96 the common habit was to have your pants hang off your hips in such a way so that only the wasteband of your underwear showed.   This was about 92-93.  At the time extra large was the common Tshirt size no matter what size you were.  Unless you were bigger than XL, in which case you made sure to add an extra X you did not need to your cloths would look right.  This led to some playing around.  Occasionally someone would loosen their belt and drop the belt line to just above the edge of the shirt.  This would give them sort of a penguin look and they would walk around for a bit.  It was never permanent.  It was a joke.  The next year a new style developed based off this simple principle.  Initially it was about an extra inch of underwear.  The pants were still hanging off the hips.  But as the years went by, it seemed to gain about an inch a year.  As I recall, Mark Whalberg (then going by Marky Mark) around 93-94 carried out some antic where he let his pants sag too much and wound up running around with his belt just above his knees and not beyond his boxers.  When the 3 inch barrier was broken, it got stupid.  At that point no one could hold up thier pants except by walking funny.  And yes, those guys are useless in a fight.  The 3 larval and 3 initial "scene" years of "Grunge" (88-93/94) were amazingly cool.   88-90 no one knew what was going on up here in Seattle (I know, I was in Texas).  Alternative was still in the REM/Cure/U2 box.  And even up here, I have it on good authority, it was still somthing of a subculture.  Nirvana hit, lolapaloosa 1 and 2 happened.  3 on it was stupid.  I never went.  Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and marshaled armies of grunge sent the marketers into scramble mode.  "How the hell do you market somthing when trashy is hip?"  All of this aside this was the greatest cultural change I had a pleasure to experience for only one reason:  It was the first, and only, time in my life where to fit in I did not have to change what I was doing or how I was dressing.  It was nice, for once, to have the whole world (well, all the parts that mattered to me really: the high schools) change to fit my style.  For a limited time I was given a reprive, I was cool in high school without working on it.  This was not going to last forever, and I needed to get ready for college which, unfortunately was going to eat me alive...  But I never would have gotten there if I was paying attention to how I dressed around my friends.</blockquote>

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