The Denim Style I Quit Buying Post–Age 30

I wear jeans a lot, and I always have. In my 20s, my taste in denim styles didn't change much. I was primarily a skinny jeans girl until my mid- to late 20s, when I started working in fashion and diversifying my wardrobe as a result. By the time I hit 30, my closet was virtually filled with jeans of varying washes and cuts. So where am I going with this? Stay with me.

I recently found myself pondering which pair of jeans I should add to my wardrobe to kick off the impending fall season, and I realised something about the options I'd narrowed it down to—not one of them had a rip in sight. The styles were varied, but ultimately, they were all clean and polished, with minimal distressing if any.

It's not that I never wore ripped jeans before I came to this realisation. Up until I turned 30, I didn't discriminate against ripped jeans by any means. You probably wouldn't have found me in shredded jeans, but I never even thought twice about passing over a pair because they had a few rips in them.

So what does this say about my style as a 30–something? Quite a lot, I think. I'm very much of the to each their own mindset when it comes to post-age 30 style, but I fully condone finding new ways to add polish to one's wardrobe as we get older. For me, that's meant subconsciously moving away from pieces that I wouldn't feel comfortable wearing in my day-to-day 30-something life. So whatever your version of ripped jeans is (rhetorically speaking), embrace it and let it help you discover new pieces to wear instead.

With that, read on to shop 17 pairs of jeans that I'd gladly give up my ripped jeans for post–age 30.