Yesterday I went to Urban Outfitters for the first time in, I would say, about four years. I used to live near an UO in the West Village, and every time I walked home from the subway, I would stop by and buy something. Everything from Urban Outfitters seems to be priced around $40-$60, and if it’s on sale, even cheaper, so I would stock up on ski sweaters, fur-trimmed tank tops, artfully torn vintage t-shirts, and the like.

But there comes a time when you realize you have become TOO OLD to wear clothes from Urban Outfitters. It happens when you look in the mirror and you realize are no longer the 22 year old urban hipster chick and cannot pull off the tight tank top, checkered punk pants, thirty butterfly pins in your deliberately dirty hair, black Converse sneakers and blue nailpolish look anymore but rather a 30ish chick who looks better in designer clothes because they are cut roomier (an undisputed fact–one of the reasons designer clothes are more expensive is that they actually have more material to them) and after a certain age, dirty hair just looks gross and it becomes necessary to pay $60 a pop for a blowout before an event.

But I always feel fond of Urban Outfitters. For a long time, even though I shopped there, I always thought that store was just for posers–for people who didn’t know how to shop at thriftshops and the Salvation Army, and wanted that grungy look without having to dig through discount bins to find it. Was I a self-hating shopper? Possibly.

Nowadays I just think it’s a convenient place to find the latest trends without paying through the nose for them–like the SKINNY JEANS phase that is so hot right now. I have been meaning to buy a pair of Earnest Sewn or those Tsubi jeans everyone is talking about. I also wish I still had my black straight Gap jeans from 1989 that were totally skinny and stretchy in my closet. Yet I sold it to a girlfriend back in college when I needed cash. I was always broke in those days, and people always coveted my clothes, so when I needed a little money, I would sell the clothes off my back. (I sold the jeans for $40, $10 more than I paid for them. In my other life, I am a stylist!)

But there was no need to buy the $300 skinny designer jeans after all, because they have a very decent version at Urban Outfitters for $68. I think they’re just the house label, they don’t even have any label on it that I can find. And once the skinny jeans trend passes (which it will, eventually), at least I’ll have only spent less than $100 on it…

So can I still get away with wearing skinny jeans? I could be a grown up and just wear some “flattering” jeans for my “shape” as the fashion magazines advise us to, but I say, to hell with that kind of thinking!

I remember when I was covering Fashion Week in New York, the coolest chick there was a British fashion editor in her 50s (or possibly 60s) who dressed like the coolest teen–she always wore the destroyed t-shirts, artfully deconstructed denim, and wore her hair in a shag. She certainly didn’t dress her age.

Dressing one’s age–where’s the fun in that? Bring on the skinny jeans!