While I was binge watching Younger via Hulu a few weekends ago, I spotted the character Kelsey Peters wearing a total classic, the denim jacket. I was instantly transported…
Does anyone remember the peak time for the denim jacket? Even as a child I knew that the Gap denim jacket was the hot item circa 1990. For those keeping track, I was six years old then. It was also around that time that my mom tapped into her inner-mom-hustle and made Christmas happen by working for L.L.Bean in Freeport, Maine. (Mom, I know you don’t think that we were-slash-are aware of why you worked evenings at the Northeastern purveyor of outdoor must-have mothership [pun], and while I cannot speak for my sister, I get it and am even more thankful now for the Barbie beach club [complete with a fucking waterslide] than I was circa 1992.)
All that is to say is that while my family lived in Maine, daytrips to Freeport were ever so frequent. Only a view shed away from the L.L.Bean flagship store was the Gap and Gap Kids Outlet. This must have been a winter between 1989 and 1992. I remember so vividly the window dressing of three or four mannequins and an identical sweater in only the boldest of colors: royal blue, goldenrod yellow, emerald green, bright red. I wanted to wear all of the sweaters in the window but Mom insisted that the Gap, even Gap Outlet, was too expensive. She would later indulge me in shopping once I learned her art of the sale, easily one of the best life lessons she ever taught me.
Once I learned my mom’s tricks of the trade on how to wait for the sale, I realized that I was too damn tall to fit into the very denim jacket that was so imprinted on my memory. Le sigh. When I watched the episode of Younger as mentioned at the beginning of this post, I immediately jumped onto Gap.com and looked for a tall denim jacket. Mission accomplished.
Lucky for my future daughter, her future grandmother taught her mother the art of the sale and her mother already tried on the short pants (jackets, too) so she won’t have to.
