Trend Alert: The Skinny Jeans Renaissance
BY SOPHIA TRIMBLE
Will the dreaded skinny jean be making a comeback sooner than we think?
13 FEB - 2023
Skinny jeans. Love ‘em or hate ‘em soon, you’ll have no choice but to simply embrace ‘em.
POV: It’s mufti day at school in 2011. You wake up and walk over to your wardrobe, reaching for the handles and gently swinging the doors open to find the outfit that you excitedly put together the night before. It features a high-low long sleeve shirt from Jay Jays and your fresh new pair of hot pink super skinny jeans. You grab your ipod touch from its charger and plug in your shitty headphones before pressing play and shoving it into the almost non-existent pockets of your skin-tight, bunched up jeans. You skip through ‘Party Rock Anthem’ by LMFAO, ‘Last Friday Night’ by Katy Perry and a few various hits before settling on ‘Super Bass’ by Nicki Minaj, you need to learn the lyrics to the rap anyway. With 2011 pop banger blaring in your ears, and an utterly abhorrent outfit worn proudly on your body, you begin the walk to school.
Seems like a dream from long ago right? Wrong. Trend predictions show that skinny jeans could be just around the corner - a scary thought for some, myself included. But not to worry, skinny jeans will be a little bit different this time around, as are most trends that come back into fashion.
Last time we were wearing skinny jeans, we paired them with things like ballet flats, and peplum tops, and if we weren’t wearing skinny jeans, we were testing out the tube skirt. Remember jeggings? Leggings made out of fabric with denim print on it - let’s hope we never do that again. There were many questionable fashion trends during the noughties onwards, but skinny jeans are the trend that stuck around for the longest and had the biggest impact. Some people still love their skinny jeans, although the ones that are around these days tend to be a bit more modern. The only place you’ll find a coloured pair skinnys around is the op shop.
Jeans (of all kinds) are the only fashion item that remain dependently cyclical. Which means the desired silhouette or style of jeans will always ebb and flow, with usually 10 to 20 years of space between what is popular. For example, Low rise jeans were popular in the early 2000’s and they are popular again now, 20 years later.
Before we really see the return of the skinny jean, we’ll likely see skinny pants come back first, similar to a capri style.
The most recent examples of skinny jeans, as seen on the spring/summer ‘23 runways around the world, tended to lean one of two ways. They were either Y2K influenced or had a distinctively punk vibe. Some examples include; Prada’s ‘ugly’ skinny jean (as seen below), and Mugler Thong jeans modelled by Miss Bella Hadid.
But before we really see the return of the skinny jean, we’ll likely see skinny pants come back first. Trend predictions suggest they’ll be in a more retro cut, and maybe even cropped, similar to a capri style. So whether they're back in retail stores tomorrow or two years from now, you can count on skinny jeans reappearing at some point. Will you be ready for the return of the skinnys?
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