Will ripped jeans ever go out of style?

I am perplexed by the appearance of the ripped jeans. What initially seemed to be a fad has now been popular for at least 10 years. Women wear them to dine in fancy restaurants, as well as to work in the garden. Will this ever end? Is there an age limit? And if not, how do you wear ripped jeans with style?—Connie, Marblehead, Mass.

According to Glenn Martens, Diesel’s creative director, when Renzo Rosso, the brand’s founder, introduced distressed denim in the 1980s, “distressed” meaning ripped, faded, and made to look old, even though jeans they were actually brand new, he shipped a box of his products to retailers in Japan. The retailers returned the jeans. They thought they had been wrong.

That was 40 years ago, and as Mr. Martens pointed out, distressed styles have helped propel Diesel’s parent company to revenue of more than one billion euros last year. Because? Mr. Martens posits that they “symbolize disruption, empower the wearer, and allow individualization of a core style.”

In other words, as Tolstoy wrote in “Anna Karenina,” “All happy families are equal; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, and the same goes for jeans. Each aged pair is aged in its own individual way, and individuality is a driving force in fashion.

In fact, designers like Mr. Martens and Ev Bravado and Téla D’Amore from who decides the war, New York’s denim specialists, are currently turning the whole idea of ​​”worn” into a kind of art: mending, splicing, shredding, and taking jeans to a place they’ve never been before. Mr. Bravado and Ms. D’Amore believe that those unique distressed jeans have achieved “timeless” status, just like the white shirt.

For me, more and more, this is an American version of couture. It speaks of manual labor, innovation, and history (also sustainability, since much of this work is recycled), and because of this, they can be worn practically anywhere. Except maybe the Oval Office.

That being said, these pieces also make their mass-market cousins ​​look seriously fake by comparison.

Part of the allure of distressed jeans has always been the work and life told in the rips, sort of like facial wrinkles are reflections of years of joy and sadness carved into the skin. Pre-ripped jeans are like padding: They fill things out but never look quite right. Paying a premium for fake pre-aging is taking a shortcut, and while shortcuts may look clever, you’ve cheated nature! — also lead to the land of fashion victims.

Even Mr. Martens said, “I prefer my denim to wear naturally, starting as a classic pair and accepting wear as it comes.”

As for the best way to wear it, she advises pairing the frayed bottom with a fresh clean top or even a luxurious fabric. Mr. Bravado and Ms. D’Amore also advise pairing distressed denim with “an oversized blazer or leather jacket and playing with exaggerated proportions.” It is the balance of yin and yang that is the key.

That way, unlike a Russian novel, this story may have a happy ending after all.

Your style questions answered

Each week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send her anytime via email either Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.