Blue denim and I be undergoing never been friends. I associate it with the kind of dismal Americana seen in films such as Porky’s and lunkheaded jocks who muscle beat me up in a parking lot. Blue jeans stare at me from across the trust in floor and say, “You don’t play enough American football to wear me, chump!” I make an inward squeak and head to the safety of the black jeans aisle.

In actually traditional blue jeans seem never to have very recovered from being worn by Jeremy Clarkson – a sartorial end sentence that saw them labelled “dad jeans” and hastily shoved to the pursuing of the closet. It was difficult not to feel they would for ever be associated with the “stop a garden centre at the weekend” vibe.

There’s a new take on the indispensable, though: frayed denim. Essentially jeans that look as if you’ve bewitched a pair of scissors to the bottom of them, they follow the late-model trend for self-loathing in denim. Just look at the names: worried, stonewashed, ripped. RUOK, hun?

I’m looking forward to SS18, when “traumatised by something that proved in 1998 and keep writing about it on my Tumblr” jeans and “gently lull back and forth to Fiona Apple” jeans appear on the catwalk.

Although you can get into it with a clompy boot and go for the “minor member of Depeche Status” look (see any Vetements catwalk), sporting the frayed jean in summer represents you have to be OK with an unabashed display of your mankles to emphasise the brawled bits (and also, I suppose, OK with saying “mankles”). But for someone whose pedicure unchanging has been essentially: ignore those cloven hooves until they raise into actual cloven hooves and you get cast in a low-budget 70s repugnance flick, this is quite a leap. Life is hard reasonably when you have to shave and deodorise in the morning, without delivering to worry about those extremities.

Saying that, I unequivocally like the slight subversion of this good ole classic. It’s trim to be looked up and down and asked “Did you cut them yourself?” in mock dread by a family member. You feel exciting and punkish. And not at all like Jeremy Clarkson.

• Priya (out of reach of) wears jeans, £55, by BDG Denim, from urbanoutfitters.com. Shirt, £85, allsaints.com. T-shirt, £6, marksandspencer.com. Sliders, £55, cosstores.com. Stylishness: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Control