I last wore skinny jeans in a much simpler time, 2018, back when I was the only person I knew who wanted to hear my ‘Riptide’ rendition on the ukulele. It was the year when YouTubers became unbearable, and Trump had Kim Kardashian visit the White House so he’d stay politically relevant. However, as time has frequently told, once something has been out of fashion for long enough, speculation begins as to when it will come back. This week alone, I’ve seen posts on reviving the Beckett trainer, jeggings, and peplum tops.
Recently, I’ve been tempted to bite the bullet and start the second wave of the paint-on-pants movement myself, in Nine Elms, with me as its Betty Friedan. Though, if I strike too early, there is a risk of instead looking like a low-budget Amy Winehouse tribute on my way to Glastonbury in 2007.
At their advent, skinny jeans were as much about rebellion as they were about fashion. Mick Jagger, The Beatles, and Elvis all donned the form-fitting denim/leather in a liberation from conservative conventions and into rock and roll. Then in the 2000s, indie sleaze and its heroin chic brought skinny jeans back again, with credits largely being given to Pete Doherty, The Vamps, and the Arctic Monkeys. This is the period of skinny jeans I remember the most, despite the closest I’ve come to indie sleaze being on my way to Venn Street Market most Saturday mornings, with miraculously more eye makeup on than I applied the night before.
Reflecting on the era, I pose the question: What is it about men in skinny jeans that creates such epic music? Perhaps the compression couture sends more blood flow to their heads, stimulating some artistic flair? In all seriousness, would we have ‘505’ if it weren’t for skinny jeans?
Last Friday night, I went to a concert at the Electric Ballroom in Camden (cool, I know) and unexpectedly came upon some circumstantial research for this article. The warm-up band, The Royston Club, produced a setlist with more of a tinge of 2014 than the ballet flats I saw in Primark last week. The music was almost identical to the ‘Now That’s What I Call Music 47’ CD that will still be lingering in my mum’s glove compartment.
I left the concert with two revelations: 1. You must never let your dignity, or concerns of latent misogyny, get in the way of asking a band where the stage door is. Especially when you are standing next to it. 2. If boy bands are back, surely the fashion of their era can’t be far behind.
Skinny jeans are either in or they’re out. They’re like Rod Stewart’s impromptu performances; they never come half-arsed. Right now, skinny jeans might be associated in equal parts with Cher Lloyd and Anton from ‘Love Island’ season 5, the poster boy for obnoxiously tight trousers. Yet, I firmly advocate that there is still something about the pants that has an air of festivals, Pacha, and the girl from ‘Common People’. I do suspect that one day I will return to the second skins, probably at the same time that I decide I’d suit a fringe, and start using phrases like ‘sex on legs’ and ‘girl boss’. I’ll let you decide which of the three has already begun.
If I do reintroduce skinny jeans into my wardrobe, and by this I mean dig them out from under my bed where I’ve been saving them for six years, I will be conscientious to use the men who dominated the trend nearly a decade ago as a benchmark for how I style them. In the meantime, I will continue to wax lyrical on music men in svelte leg prisons as my contribution to the music industry.