GREEN & GLOVER: George in jeans

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By Stephanie Green and Elizabeth Glover

Quite a lot comes between George Will and his Calvins, it seems. The conservative commentator owns only one pair of jeans, he admitted in a column last week decrying America's love affair with the sturdy sartorial staple.

When worn by adult postindustrial Americans, it turns out denim signifies pseudo-egalitarianism, infantile regression, reverse snobbery and an inauthentic longing for a departed agrarian golden age.

Who knew?

"Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy's catechism of leveling - thou shalt not dress better than society's most slovenly. To do so would be to commit the sin of lookism - of believing that appearance matters," the sometimes supercilious pundit hissed. "That heresy leads to denying the universal appropriateness of everything, and then to the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste. Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances."

Mr. Will, his column revealed, has worn jeans just once - in conformity with a strict dress code - to a 70th birthday party for former Sen. John C. Danforth where Texas troubadour Jerry Jeff Walker performed the honky-tonk anthem "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother."

We wish we could tell you that Mr. Will himself dresses like a mortician or a savings-and-loan officer, but the truth is he wears clothes rather well - his own style of dress runs to the professorially chic.

We have a hunch that if Mr. Will only knew how good he could look in denim, he might just reconsider his aversion. With that in mind, we asked design students at the School of Fashion at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco - birthplace, may we remind you, of Levi Strauss & Co. - to put together some sketches of Mr. Will in various denim looks.

See for yourself, and vote on your favorite George-in-Jeans look. We will announce your choice - and with any luck, Mr. Will's own - in a future column.

Fashionista to recessionista