L et’s start with the question everyone’s asking right now. Are skinny jeans dead? This is the pressing denim matter of the moment, so I’m going to dive right in and answer that first. Are you sitting comfortably? Yes.
That’s it, the whole answer. Yes, skinny jeans are unequivocally over. OK, thanks.
Bye now. I’m teasing. There is nothing wrong with skinnies.
If you want to wear them, you are entirely free to do so. Hey, go ahead and wear a bowler hat, if you fancy it. Or a gown with a bustle.
Why not a powdered wig? You do you! Fashion isn’t compulsory. But are skinny jeans still in fashion? No, they are not. I don’t really see their demise as a tragedy, or even as a cautionary tale of fashion flightiness.
They had two decades in the sun after their Y2K beginnings, which is a good innings. And a pair of vaguely on-the-nose jeans is a simple way to flag your fashion credentials. You did ask.
What is fascinating about the anxiety around the demise of skinny jeans is how much it seems to matter to us. What it flags is that having a pair of jeans that we feel confident in seems like a big deal. We are emotionally invested in our favourite jeans, which is why we panic when fashion changes the rules.
The moment you find a great pair of jeans is like the moment you find a signature lipstick: you feel like you are winning at life, because the right pair of jeans, like the perfect lipstick, is a brilliant thing to have in your toolkit. Just like with lipsticks, there ar.
