Designer jeans are in my genes

Designer+jeans+are+in+my+genes

If at any given time you ask me where I got something that I’m wearing, there’s about a 50-percent chance that I’ll answer, “My mom’s closet.”

Am I a walking charity case doomed to wear nothing but discarded frumpy sweaters? Far from it. In fact, if anything, I consider myself a blessed beneficiary and, more than that, a downright economist.

You see, before I was born, my mom attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Although she no longer works in fashion, to say she picked up a few tips (and a few free samples) along the way is an understatement.

But it doesn’t end there. I’m not just fashionably inferior to one parent but two.

Although he wasn’t in the fashion industry at the same time as my mom, my dad now works as the head of his own women’s clothing manufacturing company.

What does this mean for me? Mostly that he feels obligated to scrutinize the fabric of every single one of my t-shirts and declare about 90 percent of them as “trash.”

Thanks, Dad.

But luckily for me, this also means that he feels it his personal responsibility—no, his civic duty—to provide me with some real quality fabric in the form of dozens upon dozens of samples of his company’s t-shirts made of a prestigious Peruvian fabric called pima cotton.

These, my friends, are just some of the endless perks of having trendy parents.

As for my mom, her former fashionista days come in handy for me in another way.

While  for many teens, shopping for the perfect new dress or pair of heels before the next big bat mitzvah or sweet sixteen can involve the hassle of tearing through every mall store at high speed, my favorite place to shop happens to be right across the hall.

There’s no need for me to keep up with the latest trends and agonize over which styles to choose; my mom is already one step ahead of me with what she picks out for herself to wear every day. Her past experience has helped her over the years to culminate the perfect collection of jeans, handbags and shoes.

With that kind of talent and convenience under my roof, it’s worth the occasional stumble wearing heels that are a size too big for me.

I admit, I’ll probably never quite live up to my parents’ elite status of style. I may be just a mere genetic defect in their pristine sense of presentation perpetually struggling to catch up to them.  Some might be offended or embarrassed by having to squander their lives away in this lowly status.

But hey, if I get free clothes out of it, I’m more than happy to say, “No offense taken.”