The “Mom Jean” With a True Cult Following

By Leslie Price

When it comes to fashion and style, nothing seems to raise more questions or arouse more consternation than jeans. I am not a stylist, yet because of my longstanding and financially depleting interest in shopping, I field many questions from my 40-something friends about what jeans are cool right now or what jeans would look good on them. 

This is hard because it feels like almost everything is cool right now, save for old millennial/Gen X fallbacks such as skinny jeans or overly distressed boyfriend jeans. Flares are cool. Cropped jeans are cool. Puddle-hem jeans are cool. Cargos are cool. High-rise is cool, but also, low-rise is cool.

Only a few evergreen styles have survived this boom-and-bust trend cycle. For years, it was Jesse Kamm’s Kamm pants. The Kamm pant woman fell, in my mind, into the same camp as the Doen lady — she was a sort of sunwashed California variety who started her day with a cup of warm lemon water and ended it with an Epsom salt bath while someone else tended to her children. But even prior to the pandemic, the pant’s high rise and firm fabric looked uncomfortably constricting to me (I now consider firm fabric a painful novelty). Plus, at almost $400 a pop, there was the price point to consider.

The past few years, though, brought about the ascendency of a very different high-waisted pant. This style — a no-nonsense, gender-neutral utility jean with reinforced knees (similar to Carhartts) — conjured more of a “plant-your-garden-in-the-mud” Mainer vibe, mainly because they were the product of Maine resident Julie O’Rourke’s clothing brand, Rudy Jude.

I started following Rudy Jude on Instagram years ago because I loved the children’s clothing. O’Rourke has two small kids, and though her social presence is in many ways aspirational, it also feels real. The kids get grubby, she’s not like, facetuning her selfies, etc. Her clothing is produced in small runs and plant-dyed in LA. Before Frankie, my five-year-old, was picking out her own clothes, I dressed her in neutral-hued Rudy Jude pants and onesies I bought at one of the brand’s sample sales in Brooklyn, and she looked fucking adorable. I didn’t realize that O’Rourke’s jeans had become such a phenomenon, however, until I saw a picture of Haley Nahman, my former Man Repeller co-worker who now also has her own newsletter, in them. 

“I think Rudy Jude pants are popular because they nail the tricky intersection of rugged and flattering. By flattering I mean they hold their intended shape on a wide variety of bodies [and] they don’t squeeze or sag in unexpected places — and all that stays true over time, which is another difficult box to check,” says Haley when I asked her why she decided to invest in the style, which costs $240. “I just genuinely think they’re great pants.”

Rudy Jude releases her utility jeans in small quantities, and that elusiveness is partially why they’re so alluring. But limited availability isn’t the only factor behind their cult following.

The pants are an extension of O’Rourke’s lifestyle, which she documents to great success on Instagram to her more than 140,000 followers. Amanda Shamblin says she discovered Rudy Jude through O’Rourke’s social presence, and was immediately drawn to her world. “I loved that she not only wore her own designs, but really lived in them,” she says. “You could dress her pieces up for a night out on the town or go chop wood in them. I had zero intentions of chopping any wood, but I liked knowing it was a viable option.”

“The clothing signals activity and work, which I think for a lot of women, especially as they’re getting older, is appealing. It’s realistic,” says Kathryn Jezer-Morton, a writer and researcher on momfluencers. The utility of the pants, and the fact that they are made to last, feels in opposition to much of Instagram fashion. It’s not “the churn of the new” as Jezer-Morton puts it, but instead is “fairly trend agnostic.” 

Inherent in their appeal is the promise of a simpler life. As Shamblin says, “The jeans that bring you one step closer to a world of clam baking and rug weaving and butter making and yes, even wood chopping. While they may not be the most comfortable jeans I own, I feel a little more like Julie in my Rudy Jude jeans and isn’t that what all her brand fans want?”