It’s a style goal of mine to wear skirts, dresses, casual pants, and dressy pants more frequently, and blue jeans less frequently. I find the goal easy to achieve in mild, warm and hot weather because I wear dresses, skirts and cropped white jeans most of the time, and throw utility pants, printed jeans, red jeans, and micro check wide crops into the mix too. My style has a lot of variety, which is the point, and I barely wear blue jeans for six months of the year.

Things get harder when Fall and Winter set in. I reach for my blue jeans far too often, because they’re warm, practical and versatile. I’m not into wearing grey, olive, burgundy and black jeans, or corduroy bottoms, so that’s no solution. Thank goodness for white jeans, because I do wear those throughout the year. I have a few Fall and Winter dresses, and one skirt, but these items will only take me so far and then it’s too cold to wear them. I had a few pairs of Winter pants, but some creased too easily, some pilled, and others looked dated with a rise that’s too low.

So deliberately and patiently over the last few years, I prioritized filling this cold-weather bottoms wardrobe hole. I’ve been adding Fall and Winter bottoms to my wardrobe that are warm, practical, comfortable, crease-resistant, and NOT blue jeans.

The collection below shows the items I’ve accumulated over the last three years. I have a thing for micro checks so there are three pairs of those. You can’t see the colours clearly in the stock photos, but the neutrals are different. I have mustard velvet pants, red carpenter jeans, red cropped jeans, black and cream tuxedo stripe pants, white wide crops, cinnamon utility pants and pinstriped burgundy pants.

It took a while, but I finally feel that I’ve filled this wardrobe hole to my satisfaction. I’m very much enjoying the refresh. I don’t have to wear blue jeans almost exclusively for the cold-weather season. I wear dressy pants when I work with clients, but also as “everyday” pants because I can dress them down with sneakers, duck boots, and flat boots. Their versatility is sublime. I’ve been wearing many of these bottoms over the last fortnight, and still haven’t pulled out my blue jeans even once.