Big Pants Are Back. Are You All-In on the Wide-Leg Jean Fad?

Baggy jeans are back and they’re as big as ever. For Gen Xers and millennial elders, this style, which has been building for a while now, hits in a familiar way. We lived in voluminous, loose-fitting denim from the first Lollapalooza to our last rave. We’ve seen this trend rise and fall a few times. And, today, walking through Washington Square Park in Manhattan, many kids look like they could have been styled as extras for the 90’s cult classic Kids.

But why is it back? Denim designer Ben Talley Smith, who's created jeans for Rag & Bone, Helmut Lang, Earnest Sewn and Everlane says, “I would say youth culture and their interest in 90's grunge has had a big influence.” It also, according to Smith, represents a transition away from skinny and slim jeans, which had been the norm for more than a decade.

Of course the billowy denim loom is visually arresting “It's great to see a wider leg on the runway and in street style. It's really given an opportunity to add a little drama to denim,” Smith says. “Putting a skinny or slim jean down the runway seems silly but someone like ERL or Gucci doing a wide leg feels cool.”

TikTok fashion guru Jake Woolf also picks up on the 90's connection. “Fashion is a merry-go-round, so after years of skinny jean dominance during the late aughts and early 2010s, it was only natural that wide legs would come back around,” he says. “As '90s styles became "vintage," people (and thus designers) started looking at baggy clothes in general again through nostalgia-tinted glasses.”

Jean creators across the spectrum of fashion have embraced the trend with vim and vigor—and the industry loves to look in its closet for inspiration according to Scott Morrison, founder of three denim brands: Paper Denim & Cloth, 3x1, and Earnest Sewn, as well as his new line of golfwear, Radmor. 

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“Fashion is always looking for references from our past, and the 1990s are pretty big right now. And it runs contrary to the prevailing skinny jeans trend, which is always a good thing,’ Morrison says. "Designers and brands are looking for newness, that’s our job, so they’re always trying to develop something and introduce it to a customer who might not know it as well.”

None of this happened overnight. Roughly five years ago, just before the pandemic, customers began to move away from skinny jeans, according to Kiya Babzani, owner of Self Edge, the famed denim retailer. Straight-leg denim sales began to outpace slimmer cuts. Eventually, “guys trying on straight-leg jeans started asking for something wider,” he says. 

This was around the time Rick Owens released his Geth jeans, which were made from a very heavy, very wide, black denim. “It's a very expensive jean and it's got a ridiculous fit that I personally love,” Badzani says. “We noticed it sold out instantly and it was really odd for us to sell out a $1,000 jean at all six stores.”

Even serious selvedge denim heads wanted to get in on the trend. “What people were asking for, most of the brands with this quality level didn't make,” says Badzani, whose shops cater to the selvedge community. “You'd have to go to a capital F fashion brand to find something like this, then you would—if the quality was good—end up paying $800.” 

Today, many of the Japanese- and U.S.-based selvage brands make cuts in ultra-wide to meet consumer demand at more affordable price points.

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How long will this trend last? The experts aren’t sure, but Smith hopes it will be with us for the foreseeable future. “The thought of squeezing back into a tight calf seems painful to me,” he says. “Personally I've been drawn to vintage 501's that are already super worn in. And even some wider legs for a beach vibe. So hopefully for at least a few more seasons."

Badzani also sees the mode continuing for a bit because it's yet to peak. “If you go to San Francisco or Portland or Austin, this is not a thing like it is in New York or Paris,” he says. “Ninety-nine percent of people are still wearing slim, tapered jeans in southern Europe, so it’s going to take some time to hit critical mass.”

That’s music to Wolf’s ears, since in his opinion comfort is king. “Even though I'm already seeing some insiders start to mention that slim will be back in the next couple of seasons, it's hard to imagine people giving up the ease and comfort of wide-leg jeans to return to a world of thigh- and calf-restricting silhouettes any time soon,” he says.

Where are denim silhouettes moving in the future? This is a multi-million dollar question. Styles come and go, then circle back around. “In my many years of designing denim, I've come to learn that eventually trends always swing back to classic staples,” Smith says. “To this end, I think the natural progression is back to a more classic straight world—something timeless and wearable. But with such an interest in denim these days I think people will continue to play with novelty washes and finishes.”

On a recent trip to Paris during fashion week, we noticed more than a few gentlemen wearing bell bottoms or flare-cut jeans. On his end back in the States, Badzani is seeing some demand for the reprise of bootcut denim. 

“We opened in Austin recently and we had a meeting right before I left town and my staff was like, you know, we're getting a lot of requests for bootcut jeans,” he says. A sticky wicket to be sure, as next to none of the brands Self Edge carries currently makes a boot cut design. Though if demand peaks, those brands will certainly change their loom.

The future of fashion is always difficult to predict and consumers don’t always buy what designers are selling. In the end, style is a choose-your-own-adventure situation left up to the person wearing it, but the classics are classics for a reason. 

“All I know is that a pair of Levi's 501s will never not look good,” Wolf says.

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