The bigger the pants, the better

When it comes to pants, if you are still wearing skinny jeans or tapered fits, I feel obligated to ask the question, “why”? Though, as I write this, I’m sitting in a restaurant surrounded by people in skinny fits, there is also an equal number of people in looser fits — dad jeans or the like, should you need a visual reference. 

The skinny jeans — figure hugging, skin tight; and tapered at the ankles — no longer have such a huge grip on the mainstream idea of what we consider “stylish”, or on-trend, and we’re not just writing its obituary in the way we, and other fashion media outlets, have in the recent past. This was largely prompted by TikTok declarations that the skinny jean is dead, and Gen Z’s apparent displeasure with the fit made most popular by the millennial generation before them. Bigger, billowing fits and silhouettes are now firmly at the forefront of culture. 

It’s no longer unusual to come across early twenty-somethings in relaxed parachute styles, and for the past at least year or two, brands have obliged by introducing more similar styles. In the second quarter of this year, it was reported that wide leg pants accounted for 50% of Levi’s overall bottoms categories, growing 21% across the iconic denim brand’s distribution channels.

In a blog post on its website, G-Star Raw calls this the “Era of Comfort”, stating, of the skinnies, “the style is not as popular as it once was. Though skinny jeans have made a slight comeback in 2024 with (some) luxury brands including the style in their FW24 collections, the scene has been dominated by roomier fits like the loose, straight and boot cut.”

It’s crazy to think that just a few years ago, the likes of Vogue Magazine — and many fashion scribes like myself — were questioning whether dad jeans could ever be cool again. This was due to the long-running dominance of tight fits across fashion. Right now, as I sit here, judging my fellow restaurant patrons in skinny fits, I can’t help thinking how utterly unstylish they all look. It’s like they were plucked out of a different timeline; one that precedes 2020 and the changes it forced upon us.

Wardrobe mainstay

I first noticed my own discomfort with skinny fits during the lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic. Like many others, it was the first time that I came to realise that my closet had almost completely been overtaken by the skinny jeans, making for quite a dilemma when dressing up. 

Look, skinny jeans still looked great — especially on my already skinny frame — but I knew then that something had to change because, with nowhere to go, the skinny jeans were objectively uncomfortable. They had become a wardrobe mainstay over about a decade since I left high school, and my entire aesthetic as an adult had been unconsciously designed to fit around them. Covid-19 was a turning point. Much like it was for many aspects of society; fashion trends being no exception.

Across runways, and store rails, ultra skin-tight denim, cropped jackets and the like have given way to volume — tailored bottoms, flowy fits and fabrics, as well as oversized suiting and exaggerated lengths.

Far more than any other article of clothing, pants trends are a definitive timestamp precisely because they don’t change very often. It took centuries, for example, for pants to become acceptable attire for women. Skin fits go as far back as fourth century Europe; what Massachusetts College of Art and Design fashion historian and archivist Doris Domoszlai-Lantner calls “a very early example of what we might now call legging”, per a Guardian article.

More recently, the so-called cigarette jeans became a predecessor of today’s widely known skinny jeans. Icons including James Dean and Elvis Presley wore these before the denim explosion of the 70s. In the 80s, the introduction of stretch fabrics would pave the way for a late 90s, 2000s skinny jean craze that spawned trends such as “indie sleaze”, most iconically embodied by designer Hedi Slimane’s 2003 Dior Homme collection debut. 

It’s taken an entire generation, and a few obituaries for the style to finally make way for something new, and I couldn’t be more pleased that after almost two decades of dominance, more comfortable styles are trending.