White jeans: the sartorial breakout star of many pop culture phenomena. Recently, they were seen on contestants from Love Island, where they were worn super-super-skinny, as designed by the Italian maverick Deep Vein Thrombosis. If you squinted, they looked like big orthopaedic socks.

Previously, Justin Timberlake, king of double denim (RIP Britney and Justin, who gave each other the tooth-rotting nicknames “Stinky and Pinky”), paired a white Levi’s denim jacket with white jeans for his advert for summer, AKA the video for Can’t Stop The Feeling.

White jeans are caught between this vaguely upper-crust, C-list glamour (think a minor royal leaving an airport or a cast member of Made In Chelsea exiting Mahiki) and representing an eternal sartorial summer. A decade ago, things were rather different. White jeans seemed to be a living symbol of masculinity in crisis (“banterloons”, anyone?). We caught sight of them in 2006, uncomfortably clamped to the matchstick indie legs of Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell. He matched his Tipp-Exed jeans with a black leather jacket and dark shades, and thrusted manfully atop a motorbike like a catalogue model for Grrr I Am MAN magazine. With the meat-and-two-veg indie-lite sound of his band, did the jeans signal anything apart from rock cliches a gogo? Possibly not.

Still, in terms of a pop culture figure bringing back white jeans, this was a seminal moment. A couple of years before came Jack White, who didn’t take his off for about five years – the trouser equivalent of a security blanket.

When I tried on my white jeans, I was surprised that they didn’t a) stop my ability to walk down the road, or b) resurrect nightmares of mid-00s grot-rock or Love Island’s Kem and Chris. But another question remained: would this summer staple make sense at the end of winter?

I wore my pair (thankfully not super-skinny) with a sensible Oxford denim shirt under a sweatshirt and a waterproof jacket, essentially taking the innate “white-jeans-ness” out of the jeans: it was like I was just wearing a pair of regular trousers, guys…

Underplaying the fact you are wearing these historically risky pants by normalising the rest of your outfit seems a good option – although I feel as though I am dressed like a resident of Kensington. At least, in my mind, I am in the cool part.

• Priya wears jacket, £300, by Yeezy Season 5, from harveynichols.com. Shirt, £34.95, and jeans, £69.95, both gap.co.uk. Jumper, £95, by Sørensen, from matchesfashion.com. Suede trainers, £110, clarks.co.uk.

Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Samantha Cooper at Carol Hayes Management