TikTok says skinny jeans are cancelled. We agree
TikTok says skinny jeans are cancelled. We agree There's a generational denim debate raging on TikTok right now and our Style Director knows which side of the argument he falls on Teo van den Broeke Forget the war of attrition currently raging between anti-vaxxers and the sane, and ignore the Brexit-related bickering across the barricades of Brussels and White Hall, the only dispute you should be paying attention to right now is the denim-related one blowing up between gen Zers and millennials on TikTok.
Ever the hotbed of searing social discourse, the short version of the argument is that members of the former group think skinny jeans are rubbish – preferring to wear and post about the kind of big, baggy styles that were popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s – and those belonging to the latter, well, don't.
@simrannrawall, a gen Zer, outlined her transformation from skinny-jeans wearer to baggy trahser aficionado in a two-picture post, referring to said shift as a coronavirus-induced "cultural reset". On the other side of the digital fence, gen Xer @takingmylifebackat42 proclaimed, "Skinny jeans aren't out, they're in! It's taken me 43 years to get skinny enough to wear skinny jeans. They are in."
I'm a millennial (I was born in 1987), so, technically speaking, I should fall on the side of the paint-on-denim-loving brigade, but the truth is that I dislike skinny jeans with equal fervour to the aforementioned gen Zers. Potentially more.
Not only have the past three lockdowns made the prospect of wearing anything that doesn't give my legs enough room to breathe seem positively harrowing, but they've also made looser jeans and trousers, in all their understated ease and self-effacing comfort, seem considerably more chill than their skin-tight compatriots.
Pandemic-related style shifts aside, skinny jeans have been going the way of Dubai holidays and idiotically tiny handbags for a while now. It all started a few years ago when the Towie brigade took to wearing white spray-on denim in a bid to show of their leg day gains, and it reached fever pitch more recently when unsuspecting Coventry lads Jamie, Connor, Kevin and Alex were pictured outside the Birmingham branch of All Bar One wearing an array of trousers so skinny that they swiftly went viral for all the wrong reasons.
The truth is that skinny jeans really only work when they're worn by improbably skinny people. Hedi Slimane knew it when he sent out an army of sylphlike boys wearing 19cm "Dust Wash" denims as part of his Fall/Winter 2005 collection for Dior Homme (as it was then known), and arch-narco-willows Pete Doherty and Johnny Borrell et al were also in on it when they took the look global a few years later.
The skinny jean trend really reached its peak, however, when emo boys began wearing their girlfriends' Topshop jeans in the late noughties and early 2010s, and the look – then embodied by a young Harry Styles and Luke "The Kooks" Pritchard – became an early proponent of the gender fluidity movement which has since taken the world by storm.
It's perfectly understandable, then, why young people are feeling quite so miffed about their elders wearing such tight trousers. Skinny jeans were never designed to be worn by thighed-up muscle maries and muffin-topped millennials approaching mid-life, so it should come as little surprise that fresh-eyed gen Zers, unsullied as they are by years of attempting to squeeze into leg-based sausage skins, can see them for what they are: instruments of sartorial torture, not only for their wearers, but also for those forced to look on, aghast.
That doesn't mean that I'm fully on board the enormous-leg-skirt train either – far from it. Sure, wider trousers are more comfortable and arguably more lockdown appropriate, but when we go back into the real world I'm not convinced that they will seem quite as appealing as they do now.
Ultimately, in my opinion, it's the focus on superlatives – spray-on skinny, body-bag baggy – where the two groups are getting it wrong. For me, it's all about a slim jean – not skinny, never loose – with a light taper at the base. A pair of classic 501s from Levi's, for instance, or some regular cropped jeans from my current high street favourite, Arket. A jean, in short, which is designed to both flatter and deliver on comfort. A sensible jean with a stylish soul.
But come to think of it, it might be that middle-of-the-road approach that's resulted in me having just two followers on TikTok (true story)… so #bringbackcrotchlesschaps, I say. (Teo can be followed on TikTok @teovandenbroeke, but don't expect much.)
Now read
Best jeans for men: from skinny fit to wide leg
Queries about this email? Contact datacontroller@condenast.co.uk |
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire
Thank you to leave a comment on my site