Who’s Afraid Of The Skinny Jean Revival?

I have lost track of how many times skinny jeans have simultaneously been declared dead and alive. Even in 2021, a time when fashion’s pendulum of desire had swung to an extreme, oversized silhouette thanks to the mainstreaming of brands like Balenciaga, ultra-slim jeans still made up the largest share of women’s jeans at 34% of sales in the US. A large proportion of my own “muggle” friends—ie. those who don’t work in fashion and whose wardrobes remain frozen in the amber of their student days–continue to wear skinnies on nights out, often with Doc Martens and sparkly crop tops. I think those people will be relieved – if not disinterested – to learn that tight jeans are on the crest of a culture-wide resurgence, having been an intense presence throughout the autumn/winter 2024 collections, among them Dsquared2, Miu Miu, Prada, and Louis Vuitton.

Much like the Alexander McQueen skull scarf and Sienna Miller’s boho disc belts, the skinny jean has, over recent years, been used as a pawn in the ongoing culture wars between Gen-Z and Millennials. (Every generation thinks they have solved the denim conundrum). But here’s the thing: the trend cycle is now operating at such a ferocious pace that almost everything is trending at once, the lack of a trend in effect being the biggest trend of all. There have always been women and men who will wear attenuated jeans, and there have been for decades. And so, at this point, it’s perhaps less a question of fashion than preference. (Fashion also likes low-slung jeans, boyfriend jeans and horseshoe jeans.) And though twenty-somethings with TikTok accounts will likely baulk at the prospect of squeezing themselves into nerve-stemming denim, the horror associated with pencil pants is, in my opinion, undue and over-exaggerated.

Paris Hilton.

Getty Images

Katie Holmes.

Getty Images

At least part of this is because 10 years–which is just enough time for something to go from mainstream to subversive–have passed since the skinny jean was last popularised by the likes of Kate Moss, Lindsay Lohan, Katie Holmes, and Alexa Chung. It’s hard to stress just how cool these women were in the 2010s. Their reign burnt long and it burnt bright. A cursory scroll through Getty Images will demonstrate the dwindling allure of the skinny jean from about 2018 onwards–at which point they’re seen mostly on Amanda Holden and former Love Islanders with Boohoo contracts–but a new wave of Instagram It-girls and emergent designers, like Aaron Esh and Laura Andraschko, are rehabilitating the rakish silhouette, and the rock‘n’roll lifestyles of its “indie sleaze” progenitors. Scroll through the gallery below to revisit some of the best examples of the not-so-controversial skinny jean in action.