The best skinny jeans for women who don’t like the “leggings” look | Topshop’s petite Baxter jeans

 

best skinny jeans for petites

Tosphop petite Baxter jeans in vintage wash, £40

You may not think if from all of the dresses and skirts you see me wear in my Shoeper Shoe Challenge posts, but one of my favourite outfits consists of a pair of perfectly-fitted skinny blue jeans, with either a classic white tee, or a cute sweater.

The t-shirt and sweater are the easy bits, of course: it’s the perfectly-fitted jeans that are the problem.

Like many women I know, I struggle to find jeans that fit well, in the kind of wash I like. At just a touch under 5’4″, I’m slightly too tall for the petite ranges, but much too short for regular length jeans, which means that almost every pair I buy has to be hemmed. Hemming jeans isn’t an issue, obviously, but I never really like the way they look afterwards, and I dream of finding a pair of jeans I can just slip on, and have them fit perfectly, without any fuss.

Just to make things that little bit more difficult, I’m really fussy about how my jeans look. My preference is for a classic, mid-blue wash, without too much distressing or fading. Lately every single pair I’ve found have had giant white patches on the thighs, and I’ve returned them all because of it: I’m going to make myself sound really old here, but I just don’t see the point in spending money on jeans that ALREADY look like they’ve been tucked at the back of the wardrobe for years. They’ll fade soon enough on their own, and those exaggerated white patches just look ridiculous to me, because they don’t actually mimic the natural ageing of denim: they just look fake, which is exactly what they are.

Then there’s the fit. Not only do I struggle with length, you see, I also struggle with width: calf width, that is. I love skinny jeans, but lately it’s been really hard to find jeans that are JUST “skinny”. Most pairs these days seem to be super-skinny, legging-style jeans, which cling to my legs like Saran Wrap, and make them look like a couple of sausages: not exactly the look I’m after.

Enter Topshop’s Baxter skinnies. I absolutely swear by these jeans, which are skinny without being skin-tight, and which come in a wide range of washes, including this perfect mid-blue. The petite length is exactly what I’m looking for: I can’t get away with petite jeans if they’re bootcut or flared, but because I like my skinny jeans to hit right on the ankle, these are perfect. There’s just one problem: although the colour range is fantastic in the regular length, the petite range is much more limited, and it’s been years since I last found a wash I liked. My last pair of Baxters have long since gone to the great wardrobe in the sky (I dropped a tube of long-wear lipstick on them on holiday one year: the lipstick came out, but all of the scrubbing I had to do to remove it left a giant faded patch on the thigh. It didn’t come out, obviously.), so I’ve been waiting for a long, long time for Topshop to finally release that perfect wash in a petite leg.

Now that they have, I guess all I have to do is cross my fingers and hope my size is still in stock by pay day…

(Oh, and don’t worry: if they are, I definitely won’t be wearing them with THOSE shoes!)

P.S. If you’re not petite, these also come in regular!

2 Comments

  • They do look a good fit – I HATE skinny jeans as my runners calves feel strangulated and I’ve yet to find a pair that suit me. Even maternity jeans got stuck on at the ankles a while back, not that I have big ankles, the H&M things were just awful and SO tight. Anyway humpf. Once the baby arrives I might need to investigate these as they aren’t clinging to her ankles!

    • Yeah, I have the same “runner’s calves” issue, I think – if the jeans fit me at the waist, the legs will be waaaay too tight on the leg… and, of course, if they fit on the leg, then they’re way too big on the waist: so frustrating!

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