The Denim Style I Quit Buying Post–Age 30

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(Image credit: Sandra Semburg)

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 realized 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 realization. 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 18 pairs of jeans that I'd gladly give up my ripped jeans for post-age 30. 

Allyson Payer
Senior Editor

Allyson is a senior editor for Who What Wear. She joined the company in 2014 as co-founder Katherine Power's executive assistant and over the years has written hundreds of stories for Who What Wear. Prior to her career in fashion, Allyson worked in the entertainment industry at companies such as Sony Pictures Television. Allyson is now based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and is originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She holds a BFA in theater. Her path to fashion may not have been linear, but based on the number of fashion magazines she collected as a child and young adult, it was meant to be.