As A Millennial, This Is Why I'll Never Ditch My Skinny Jeans
Let me take you back, for a moment, to the early 2000s. You’re on the way to meet some friends, wired headphones trailing triumphantly from your iPod mini and a pre-Recession spring in your step. Your top? Peplum. Your necklace? Statement. Your jeans? They might well be Topshop Jamies or Jonis, and they’re definitely skinny. Your feet? Oh, wait, you can no longer feel them – your jeans are too tight.
For millennials like me, it’s fun to revisit the bygone era of the skinny jean, especially because the much-maligned style is so tied up in other irresistibly nostalgic trends, like Y2K and indie sleaze. But as for actually wearing this often uncomfortably tight and notoriously unforgiving style? That might sound like one throwback too far.
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Not so for Kate Moss, the poster girl for the style, who was photographed earlier this year in a vintage Vivienne Westwood blouse paired with jeans that were not only skinny but low-rise – a brilliantly bold, Noughties, double whammy. Nor for Miu Miu, Balenciaga or Alexander McQueen, who all featured skinny jeans in their AW24 collections. Celebrities like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner started taking the cues back in 2023, stepping out in ‘skinny-adjacent’ styles and, in the case of EmRata, tucking them into boots.
But, dear reader, instead of balking at their oft-rumoured return, I’m here to offer a defence of skinny jeans, starting with a brief history of their rise and fall. Their origin is most often traced back to Elvis and other 1950s icons, who gave slim-fitting denim its first rock’n’roll association, later revived by Noughties indie bands with lanky lead singers. In 2003, in a case of extraordinary nominative determinism, Hedi Slimane debuted gloriously spray-on styles in a now iconic AW collection for Dior Homme. With a little help from Kate Moss, Alexa Chung and the Olsen twins, skinny jeans soon had us all in a sartorial chokehold. Surely, these were a wardrobe stalwart that would transcend the trend cycle.
But then something unimaginable happened: looser styles regained popularity, from high-waisted boot-cuts to wide-legs, flares and the ubiquitous ‘mom jean’. Skinny jeans became a signifier of millennial irrelevance, up there with side partings, ankle socks and the crying-with-laughter emoji in terms of choices that are (allegedly) terminally cringe.
In 2021, a ‘no skinny jeans’ tag went viral on TikTok and sales of wide-legged styles reportedly soared by 97%. Covid was the nail in the coffin; the idea of returning to any kind of rigid denim after legging-clad lockdowns seemed ludicrous. To hoist ourselves back into skinny jeans? Laughable.
Or is it? Back when Slimane revisited the style in Celine’s SS23 ‘Indie Summer’ show, memorably paired with moto boots and longline blazers, I was tempted. When I came across an old pair during a recent wardrobe clearout I thought: why not? At this point in the endless denim cycle, it still feels a little daring, a little risky, to wear them. And there’s something liberating about heaving on a style that, in its infancy, proposed something quite radical: showing off the shape of your legs and bum. Obviously, this is not something everyone wants to do all – or any – of the time, and that is absolutely fair enough. But for those who want to dip a toe back into this love-to-hate cut for the sheer fun and fashion of it, I say more power to you.
They’re a surprisingly versatile, neutral base to an outfit. Could you pair yours with a longline top or boxy knit? Could you, heaven forbid, tuck them into a pair of boots, à la Demna’s Balenciaga AW24 iteration, and top them off with a leather bomber and an XXL scarf? Of course you could. Or you might want to go full Miu Miu and bring your skinnies back with a bang in a double denim look – although a more wearable take on Mrs. Prada’s abdomen-baring crop tops might come from Camille Rowe at Chanel’s AW24 show. The model opted for trusty Levi’s 501s, pairing the straight style with a white tee, a Chanel denim jacket and an orange-red Quilted Patent Reissue 2.55 Flap Bag, just for good measure.
Proponents of baggier styles saw the swing away from skinny jeans as liberating, but I’m starting to think the opposite. Personally, I find there’s something satisfying about wearing a style that the media tells me Gen Z is telling me not to wear on TikTok. I’m also yet to be convinced that skinny jeans are any less comfortable than the looser styles that have reigned for the last decade or so (I’ve got plenty of high-waisted mom jeans that dig into all the wrong places). If you can find a pair with enough stretch to be comfortable and enough structure to prevent them from slipping down all the time, you’ll be onto a winner. And even if you can’t, as Lauren Bravo sagely says on the skinny jeans episode of the Sentimental Garbage podcast: ‘Some good jeans are a bit punishing’.
And there’s the cyclical fashion bonus. If you held onto a pair from many moons ago and they still fit, you can dip back into your own personal style archives and ‘shop your own wardrobe’. If you’re a ruthless declutterer or reluctant to relive the circulation-cutting days of old, go slim rather than skinny – 7 for all Mankind, Reformation and Mother have some great options, as do Zara and Arket.
So, are skinny jeans back? For now, they might be considered a sartorial Schrödinger’s cat: both dead and alive. All I’m saying is, don’t rule them out just yet.
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