Copyright The Boston Globe
Just a few years ago, the fashion magazines, retail analysts, and TikTok were proclaiming that skinny was dead – and that wide-leg jeans were in. The CEO of Levi’s himself said the world might be entering a “new denim cycle.” A new denim cycle. The magnitude of it almost took your breath away. Pleistocene, Holocene, Denimocene. Skinny. Wide. We went from one extreme to the other, and for many, it was whiplash city, politics written in denim, with the victims, as usual, the little people, who were just trying to get dressed, but being tossed around by a shadowy fashion cabal. And people worry that the unelected tech bros controlling AI have too much power. But now, less than five years since skinny was tossed from office, Vogue is all open arms: “The New and Improved Skinny Jean Is Firmly Here for Fall," the magazine wrote recently. Improved? By any objective measure, the only improved pair of skinny jeans is one with a dagger through its spindly, Saran-wrap legs. But apparently, this time around, the jeans won’t be so aggressive. Not to seem pessimistic on that front, but here’s a description of a $370 pair of “improved” skinny jeans highlighted in that very article. “You must wiggle, jump and lay to get them on and off, but the result is a long, slim silhouette with a generous lift to the butt. It’s a trade-off you must negotiate with yourself.” The sad thing is that at this point, as scarred as we were by skinny jeans, in some way, the wide-jeans were almost worse. The wide-leg pants were so baggy that one fashion writer likened them to “acute-onset elephantiasis.” A friend who wore a pair called them her “depression jeans” and said they were a “symptom” and not a “choice.” Their names alone — the barrel, the balloon, the puddle — should have been our tip-off. Skinny jeans have their fans, including, of course, the skinny — and those hoping the aspirational name will become a corporeal reality, or they wouldn’t be coming back. But the general mood was summed up by Kate Powers, a Boston-based author and educator focused on social-emotional learning and personal growth. “The return of skinny jeans feels like a personal attack on everyone who’s finally made peace with comfort, stretch waistbands, and the concept of breathing,” she said. “After years of surviving shapewear, hot flashes, and low-rise trauma, I’m firmly in my wide-leg, elastic-waist, ‘let me live my life’ era.” Given how much is going on in the world, and with food insecurity and other threats growing, not everyone is up on jeans trends, and when I brought it up in conversation, it was often the first people were hearing of the threat. “No!” yelled an acupuncturist who was sticking needles in my right calf (for a non-jeans-related issue), as if I’d delivered bad medical news. “Why???” wailed a friend who’d just made her peace with wide-leg jeans. Why? There are reasons. For one, our jeans overlords need to sell more pants. And for two, well, let’s let Lauren Beckham Falcone, the WROR radio host, explain: “Skinny jeans are back because everyone’s on Ozempic and it’s not a fair playing field!!!” she said. Given how recently skinny jeans were in style, and their decade-plus reign, many people not only still have their old pairs but own them in, ahem, multiple sizes. In that way — and that way only — their return could be seen as a blessing. If there’s one thing worse than wearing skinny jeans, it’s shopping for them. “Trying on jeans at a department store is like getting weighed at the doctor’s office,” one woman texted me. “I’m [already] dealing with enough.” A person could, of course, simply opt out. Refuse to be ruled by a pair of pants. But that can be harder than it sounds. Just as Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve can trigger an examination of where you are in your life, so too can jeans. Is opting out giving up? What does it say when you aren’t even trying anymore? Or maybe there’s a third way, good for the budget-conscious, the sanity-minded, and even fashionistas. It comes courtesy of Teri Agins, the fashion writer and author of “The End of Fashion: How Marketing Changed the Clothing Game Forever.” She pointed to the huge vintage trend, and noted its blessing: “There are a lot of jeans going on right now,” she said. “You won’t get penalized for looking out of style.”
