Do you smell that in the air? The sickly saccharine tang of pumpkin spice; a hint of crisp leaves burning. The noonday sun beating down upon your shoulders, ensconced in an optimistic leather jacket, though it is 83 degrees outside. It’s almost fall, motherfuckers, and I have consulted my fashion bible E! News for guidance on what to wear for autumn’s ominous chill. The answer is a cool, shocking trend that will surprise you: skinny jeans.
Apropos of nothing except a photo of Bella Hadid wearing a pair of the aforementioned pant, E! News has ruled it and thus, it is so: skinny jeans are back from the dead (?) and will be encasing your lower extremities like denim sausage casings once again. Following Big Fashion’s fickle trends is exhausting; as Heidi Klum says in slightly-Teutonic English at the beginning of every episode of Project Runway, “In the fashion world, one day you’re in... the next day you’re out.” After a brief reprieve, if a reprieve at all, skinny jeans are IN. Let’s let E! News take this one from here:
We were really into skinny jeans and then we just weren’t. That’s what it felt like, right? Then there were boyfriend jeans, mom jeans, cropped jeans, flared cropped jeans, straight-leg jeans, etc. But the skinny style had yet to make an official comeback.
Skinny jeans weren’t necessarily hiding; on an average day when it is neither too warm nor too cold out, I see at least 10 pairs walking to work., mixed in nicely with the cropped, wide-leg, JNCO redux monstrosities that look very comfortable but make me look like I’m in need of a diaper change. It’s not entirely clear where the skinny jeans disappeared to—Mallorca? An Alpine spa?—but they are back.
To be entirely fair, there has been a loosening in the women’s pant department as of late; skinny jeans have retreated to let their floppy, baggy, weird sistren share some of the shine. The trouble is, those jeans look good on some people and skinny jeans, I’m sorry to say, look kind of decent on everyone. They’re leggings, but jeans. You can wear them and be comfortable enough without showing the contours of your downstairs to the public. Also, they were never gone. They’ve always been there. They will always be there, until human beings evolve to floating brains in jars hooked up to hoverboards, speaking words an complex thoughts through a jerry-rigged Amazon Echo. We will always have the skinny jeans. They’ve never gone away.