"There are some items that symbolise the gap between the person you want to be and the person you actually are. For me, that item is the leather trouser. Long the reserve of motorcyclists or try-hards (the Guardian in 2020: to buy a pair was to show the world that you were coping very badly with the ageing process), the trousers started to appear everywhere a few years ago."
"I admired the women who wore them; they looked sophisticated, glamorous, as if they had dropped in from an era yet to be touched by athleisure and sweatpants and trainers. I tried on a black pair at a vintage shop, and looked like a child playing biker dress-up. I didn't have the heft for black leather, and wanted something less, uh, leathery. I found a cute pink pair on Vinted, which looks like something Barbie would wear if she wanted to indulge her edgy side."
Vinted launched in the UK just over ten years ago and accelerated in popularity during 2021 as many people cleared out wardrobes. Vinted favourites act as a social signal of bargain-hunting and avoiding mass retail purchases. The items people heart often reveal aspirational identities and gaps between ideal and actual selves. Leather trousers exemplify an item that suggests sophistication but raises doubts about fit and comfort, causing ambivalence. Favourites frequently sit in limbo as wardrobe fantasies, reflecting midlife anxieties and a tension between style aspirations and comfort-driven habits.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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