Those Skinny Britches: Grabbing L.A.'s Thinnest Jeans ...

Hart came up with the SkinnyJeans idea after buying a pair of 7 for All Mankind skinny jeans to wear to a party in the Hamptons. When she looked at herself in the mirror, it occurred to her that her legs could look so much slimmer if she just monkeyed around with the details of the jeans. People lie to themselves, Hart believes.

“It’s very emotional. They think they can wear tapered ankle jeans like those superskinny gorgeous girls, who look great in skinny jeans,” she says, “and instead they end up looking awful.”

Not ready for wide legs: J Brand's 10-inch skinny

Denim camouflage: SkinnyJeans by Catherine Hart

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More About

• Susie Crippen
• Catherine Hart
• Natasha Peay
• Adriano Goldschmied
• Linda McNair

If J Brand’s Crippen is the girl we idealize, the one with the flawless style we wish to emulate, Hart is our brutal, tough-love best friend who will say yes, that outfit looks great on her, but it makes your butt look big, so try this instead.

She sends me to the Linda McNair boutique on Sunset Boulevard to try the jeans on. “Of course, you want the SkinnyJeans,” says McNair. Hart is no snob: Her jeans go all the way up to size 18 (Oprah’s are a 14), and McNair carries the full range, but she has just given her very last pair to a customer with a “muscular thigh” dilemma. She indicates a wall of empty shelves. “You see these? These were all SkinnyJeans. Then the vultures swooped in. Don’t worry, we’re getting another shipment soon!”

Natasha Peay, manager of Santa Monica’s Blues Jean Bar, has great skinny-jeans war stories to tell, about mothers instructing daughters on how to yank their jeans up with hangers the old-fashioned way, or about teenage boys shamefully stealing their sisters’ skinny jeans. You sidle up to Natasha at the bar, tell her or any of the other “bartenders” what you are looking for in a jean, what color or size or style, and she suggests a few from the ones “on tap” folded in piles everywhere. She’ll slap three or four down on the bar in front of you to “get everybody’s thoughts going.”

Peay works in the trenches, so she knows that customers usually need to get their J Brands two sizes up (they are the skinniest on the market). Or that flap pockets are good for women who “don’t have too much volume in the back,” but they shouldn’t be too long, or you risk elongating your rear. She can debate the merits of ankle bunching versus not, or tell you that Justin Timberlake’s William Rast–brand jeans tend to stretch out, so get them tight.

Sometimes, when a woman is waffling, she’ll secretly stick a skinny jean into the dressing room among the customer’s other choices for her to try. “We’ve put a lot of women into their first skinnies,” Peay says. “It’s a hard transition.”

You’ll turn black and blue in the morning from putting them on, but if you can rock a skinny, you should, Peay thinks, because once you’ve got them on, you feel 1 inch thin and so, so sexy.

Over on tony Robertson Boulevard, every girl wore a tight tapered jean with a pillow-size purse on her elbow. At Adriano Goldschmied, they were hawking a crisp, taut skinny jean called “The Stilt,” made of denim so thick it seemed more like wool felt, with pant legs narrow as cheerleader-sweater arms. Across the street, at 7 for All Mankind, the salesclerk deftly managed to suppress her disdain when I inquired about their selection of skinnies.

“It’s all wide leg and flared boot cut with us for spring and summer,” she sniffed, then sauntered away, terrifying and beautiful in wide-leg stovepipe jeans that made her look like a pirate.

Just as we’re finally adjusting to the new reality of the skintight, tapered-leg jean, it appears that certain factions in the fashion industry are trying to foist upon us a new, new reality: the loose, wide-leg jean. Is the wide-leg coming to swallow up our thighs and calves — much as the skinny flaunts them — and swath us in bolts of heavy denim just in time for summer in sweltering Southern California? Or will it be simply a mutant strain of jean, embraced by few, ridiculed by many. On behalf of the population that hates both heat stroke and the added visual heft of leg-fattening bell-bottoms, I vote for mutant strain. We’ll wear clothes that make us hot. We’ll even wear clothes that make us look fat. But hot and fat? Not so much.

KNOW YOUR SKINNY

“The Skinny,” “The Pencil” and “The Cigarette” by J Brand. Three different leg openings: 10-inch, 12-inch and 14-inch. Clean, elegant, simple. No visible brand label so as not to make you look like a label whore. $158–$198. Available at American Rag, 126½ S. La Brea Ave., (323) 935-3154 or www.jbrandjeans.com.