In Defence Of Skinny Jeans: How Microtrends Aren’t Dictating Our Actual Style
When I was fifteen - which I’ll (reluctantly) admit was over a decade ago at this point - the only way you could have gotten me to part ways with my bone-clinging, ‘spray on’ jeans, was if you had pried them out of my cold, dead, chipped black nail-polished fingers. My mother would guffaw as I engaged in a bizarre ritual she hadn’t seen since the 70s of her youth; lying on the bed, sucking in until light-headed and pulling my fly up with a wire coat hanger looped through the zip―such was their tightness, it was the only way I could actually get them on.
Angst-ridden teens of the mid aughts apart, the humble skinny jean was considered a fool-proof closet staple to a vast majority of clothes-wearers in only the relatively recent past. But now, figure-hugging denim has become one of the most contentious items of clothing online, coming to represent a full blown generational divide between ‘cheugy’ millennials and clued-in Gen Z. The stones have been cast―skinny jeans were dubbed out in a dizzying multitude of scrollable video content faster than you can say middle-part.
However recently, upon noting that many women whom I consider to be extremely stylish - from my chic European co-workers, to A-list celebrities like Anya Taylor Joy and indie sleaze revival bloggers such as @megsuperstarprincess, are all rocking skinnies in 2022 - I began to wonder whether these debates only exist, to an extent, in a chronically online vacuum.
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And according to market research, though their popularity has decreased, skinny jeans do still sell IRL. A recent report by retail intelligence platform Edited revealed that though slim-fit denim silhouettes are declining significantly where men’s fashion is concerned, they remain important in the womenswear market. Despite reducing skinny jean arrivals, retailers are still dedicating a substantial proportion of their denim assortment to tighter silhouettes as the shape has “less trend standing” and is considered more of a core item.
A quick stroll through any major department store will confirm their ubiquity. Though their bell-bottomed, straight-legged and downright baggy predecessors might currently take precedence in trendy youth-centric shopfronts and mannequin displays, I am yet to come across a shortage in options of slim cut varieties of denim at the mall.
Unsurprisingly, the Edited report also revealed that among the retailers with the most significant dip in new slim-fit arrivals were fast-fashion titans of the likes of BooHoo ― a mainstay of the skimpy-cut, synthetic, wash-and-toss meteor shower that is TikTok micro-trend haul culture ― the very culture within which skinnies were first widely admonished. But do these reactionary, online, trend commentary spaces actually reflect the wardrobes of reality?
I can’t help but feel that there’s a sneaking dissonance between these sweeping ‘decisions’ that Tiktok and the online pop culture-verse apparently ‘come to’, and their real world applicability. This is the same cacophonous discursive environment that breeds niche aesthetics and ‘cores’ at such a breakneck pace, that these trends end up beloved and cancelled within the same breath.
One need only look to Tiktok’s hilariously short-lived ‘twee’ revival from the beginning of this year, wherein the hordes of girls twirling to a saccharine She & Him ditty faced vicious backlash, with detractors condemning the aesthetic’s thin-white-exclusionary potential, claiming it harkened back to the fraught feeds of tumblr. A rise and fall of biblical proportions had transpired before I personally saw a single person rocking a mid-2000s mod cloth dress, knee socks or owl appliqués of any sort out in the wild.
Likewise, even the internet-borne fads with the teeth to stay relevant for a good while, spurring listicles insisting that we’re going to be seeing this trend everywhere―think dark academia, cottage core, weird girl etc―feel like they have little sartorial influence outside of editorials, online mood board culture and niche styling videos. Though currently, the pop-culturally inclined can’t seem to click far before encountering an array of vloggers and journalists proclaiming that ballet core is exploding in popularity, surely most would be remiss to say that they’ve actually seen a substantial number of people wearing pastel leotards, wrap skirts and fuzzy pink leg warmers out and about. In fact, even where Gen Z are concerned, I’d say I’ve seen more young girls rocking―gasp!―skinny jeans.
Something else that makes me sceptical of these staunch proclamations that slim-fit denim is heaving its last dying breaths in the realm of relevance, is that that its emergence and rise to popularity in the mid-2000s was in fact rooted in subversive counterculture; in designers and artists with a vested interest in punk rock, laissez faire-cool.
While image of skinny jeans that currently occupies the Gen Z Tiktok consciousness might conjure Disney adult, mommy vlogger, Christian girl Autumn vibes, I grew up admiring the tight-black Parisian swagger of Hedi Silmane for YSL’s I’m with the band waifs; the provocative, flash-bulb lit pouts of American Apparel models in their bum-hugging denim; eyeliner smeared indie bands, studded belt emo kids, and a shambolic Pete Doherty of the Libertines. And these mid-aughts iterations of the skinny fit, in fact, owe their outsider appeal to 70s punk rockers like The Ramones; the radical otherworldliness of the David Bowie music video universe.
“I’m not ruling out skinny jeans―and not because I think they’re going to ‘come back’. More and more I find myself longing to be freed from the shackles of trendiness―bottom line, with the right execution and styling, I simply think they look good. What’s more important than that?”
The pendulum of culture now swings so rapidly that it’s becoming invisible in motion blur―everything and nothing is trendy all at once. With the internet’s democratization of image culture, we see trends cycling through the decades at a constantly accelerating rate. In my vision of a utopian online fashion landscape, I picture an emphasis on personal references and personal style. Rather than adhering to constantly morphing, overly prescriptive micro-trends, which ultimately encourage excessive consumerism and cruel, mob-minded judginess, will online fashion group-think ever reach a tipping point, and say let’s just wear what we want?
Then again, this is arguably how those not plugged into the cess-pool of the hyper-online already operate when figuring out what to wear in the morning. I doubt that my aforementioned examples of 2022 proponents of skinny jeans would pay much mind to accusations of cheugy-ness. Conversely, there is a new guard of trailblazing, anti-trend fashion propagating in other corners of the internet, thanks to influencers like @tinyjewishgirl and @sarahcampo, who are reframing the process of dressing oneself in a compellingly intuitive, individualistic way.
Only a few years ago I wouldn’t have been caught dead in anything low-rise, and neither would have many of my fashion-savvy friends. Just this year I bought a pair of True Religion bumsters to alternate with my faithful ribcage Levis. I’m not ruling out skinny jeans―and not because I think they’re going to ‘come back’. More and more I find myself longing to be freed from the shackles of trendiness―bottom line, with the right execution and styling, I simply think they look good. What’s more important than that?
Words: Isabella Venutti
