I’ve misplaced observe of what number of instances skinny denims have concurrently been declared lifeless and alive. Even in 2021, a time when trend’s pendulum of need had swung to an excessive, outsized silhouette because of the mainstreaming of manufacturers like Balenciaga, ultra-slim denims nonetheless made up the most important share of ladies’s denims at 34% of gross sales within the US. A big proportion of my very own “muggle” mates—ie. those that don’t work in trend and whose wardrobes stay frozen within the amber of their scholar days–proceed to put on skinnies on nights out, typically with Doc Martens and sparkly crop tops. I believe these individuals shall be relieved – if not disinterested – to study that tight denims are on the crest of a culture-wide resurgence, having been an intense presence all through the autumn/winter 2024 collections, amongst them Dsquared2, Miu Miu, Prada, and Louis Vuitton.
Very like the Alexander McQueen cranium scarf and Sienna Miller’s boho disc belts, the thin jean has, over current years, been used as a pawn within the ongoing tradition wars between Gen-Z and Millennials. (Each technology thinks they’ve solved the denim conundrum). However right here’s the factor: the development cycle is now working at such a ferocious tempo that nearly all the things is trending without delay, the shortage of a development in impact being the most important development of all. There have at all times been ladies and men who will put on attenuated denims, and there have been for many years. And so, at this level, it’s maybe much less a query of trend than choice. (Style additionally likes low-slung denims, boyfriend denims and horseshoe denims.) And although twenty-somethings with TikTok accounts will possible baulk on the prospect of compressing themselves into nerve-stemming denim, the horror related to pencil pants is, for my part, undue and over-exaggerated.
Not less than a part of it’s because 10 years–which is simply sufficient time for one thing to go from mainstream to subversive–have handed because the skinny jean was final popularised by the likes of Kate Moss, Lindsay Lohan, Katie Holmes, and Alexa Chung. It’s onerous to emphasize simply how cool these girls had been within the 2010s. Their reign burnt lengthy and it burnt shiny. A cursory scroll via Getty Pictures will display the dwindling attract of the thin jean from about 2018 onwards–at which level they’re seen totally on Amanda Holden and former Love Islanders with Boohoo contracts–however a brand new wave of Instagram It-girls and emergent designers, like Aaron Esh and Laura Andraschko, are rehabilitating the rakish silhouette, and the rock‘n’roll life of its “indie sleaze” progenitors. Scroll via the gallery under to revisit a few of the greatest examples of the not-so-controversial skinny jean in motion.
