The big story in jeans: Wide legs are back

After several years of falling demin sales, jeans makers have come up with a way to send women scrambling for new clothes.

Wide-leg jeans are back. Some, like this pair of Levi's, also boast higher waistlines -- and higher price tags. The suggested ticket for the Levi's: $165. A lower-waist version made from organic cotton sells for $78.

I recall (with a distinct cringe) the skinny leg jeans of last year, so unforgiving they made the Olsen twins look tubby.

Happily, I also remember the last time wide legs were in vogue, when I was a winsome, rail-thin college girl in the late 1970s. I wish I had appreciated how effortlessly appealing my contemporaries and I looked in our super-flared jeans, ribbed poor-boy sweaters and platform shoes, flicking our glossy, center-parted waist-length hair and averting our eyes (painstakingly rimmed with liquid liner). Golly, were we ever cute!

As the voice of experience, here's my advice on how to put together your new, wide-leg jeans. Keep that long line going with heels, anything from strappy sandals to boots. Don't let your wide legs near sneakers or ballerinia flats, not even in the closet. If you're thick in the middle, choose a top that's flowing and forgiving. But if you're lithe and limber, choose a form-fitting pullover in keeping with the poor boys of yesteryear. Groovy.