When I was in seventh grade, bellbottoms came back big time. I saw kids walking around in obviously homemade pairs--jeans with the bottom five inches of the leg seams split, and filled in with triangles of every kind of print you could imagine. (I specifically remember one pair made with that farmhouse tablecloth red-check gingham. I lived in Alaska. ) I don't think I ever heard anyone say they liked bellbottoms; they just wore them, because that's what people were doing. (I stuck to my jeans and souvenir t-shirts, thank you very much. ) Oddly, I heard lots of adults complain about it. "They were ugly back then, and they're ugly now," that kind of thing. The adults knew that retro isn't automatically attractive, if you don't update it somehow. Kyra and Robertson Hartnett, of twenty2, understand that the key ingredient to classic design is modification, combining proven aesthetics with current ideas. Their retro-inspired patterns look just as good with your grandmother's furniture as they will with your granddaughter's.
