Are skinny jeans in or out?

Wherever you look, it’s almost impossible to ignore that denim is back in a very big way. Not that it ever disappeared — nor will it ever go away — but it’s been a minute since high street brands have really pushed denim to interesting places. From Mugler’s mesh-panel high rise skinnies to Balenciaga and Altuzarra’s SS ’23 takes on the maxi skirt, we have slowly witnessed a post-pandemic outlook in fashion that is moving us away from the comfortable fits we’ve preferred for quite a while now.

But while brands — and department stores alike — make a new push for denim, this happens at a time when there’s a lot of debate about whether or not skinny jeans are dead, as some have so boldly declared.

I’ve personally been a fan of skinnies for the better part of the last decade and I must admit, it was the pandemic that weaned me off what had defined my personal style my entire adult life. The truth is, skinny jeans are not all that comfortable, doesn’t matter what your favourite brand or editor might tell you. For me personally, they simply looked fantastic on my skinny frame. Now, however, I have fallen in love with the comfort I get from looser fits and, quite honestly, anything that isn’t denim.

I might be in the minority, if the words of Levi’s Strauss CEO Chip Berg are anything to go by. “The skinny jean is not going away any time soon,” he said earlier in 2023 at the brand’s fourth-quarter earnings call, adding that the style had been a top seller for the brand in 2022, even though half of its revenue in the bottoms category had admittedly come from baggier fits for the last quarter, according to Reuters.com.

Berg’s declaration follows many a fashion magazine’s insistence that skinnies are done, largely because Gen Z fashion commentators on TikTok had asserted it to be so. Honestly, the pandemic environment was ripe for the style’s demise and the narrative really took off. But numbers don’t lie, and over the last few months, depending on what or who you read, you’d be justified in your confusion about whether or not the style is still acceptable.

“TikTok says skinny jeans are cancelled. We agree,” read a GQ Magazine headline back in 2021.

“The skinny jean is officially dead,” wrote one Tiffany Ap for Quartz, reporting early in 2022 that the straight leg jean had toppled it as the most popular fit. But what Levi’s earnings call might confirm is that the figure-hugging style’s obituary had been prematurely written. While some media outlets are still singing from the “skinny jeans are dead” hymn book, over on TikTok, where the chorus began, self-proclaimed trend watchers are saying: “Skinny jeans are back.”

“Recently, fashion-forward celebrities and royals alike have all been sporting the polarising silhouette, leading TikTok creators to dub the style an incoming trend,” reports Bustle.

This is symptomatic of an era where much that many call trends is nothing beyond flash-in-a-pan fads no different to, say, a trending sound on TikTok, that may garner you 30,000 likes based on nothing but the fact that you simply shot a video with that particular sound. So much value is placed on fleeting obsessions, rather than what’s actually happening around us to influence our purchases beyond what a content creator says, giving no context to their claims in a way a professional consumer insights analyst would be required to.

It confirms a disconnect between what’s happening in real life and what’s merely digital noise. It reveals a persistent devaluation of expertise that should force us to look twice at what we see or hear in favour of transient virality. There are so many voices all speaking at the same time, few stop to think about why those voices are worth listening to, beyond the fact that they’ve just cashed in their proverbial 15 minutes of social media notoriety.

So, while I don’t have an answer to the question of whether or not you should still be wearing your skinny jeans, I do think there’s something positive to get out of this. Nothing trumps developing a personal style that doesn’t require looking at what’s happening outside, let alone on TikTok.