Skinny Jeans Versus Regular Jeans
Both men and women can wear skinny jeans, the slim-fitting, tapered pants that began experiencing a rebirth in the mid-2000s. The cut and fit of these jeans distinguish them from traditional straight-legged, mid-rise jeans. Skinny jeans have gone in and out of style since they were first popularized in the 1950s. Does this Spark an idea?
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Leg Width
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Skinny jeans taper as the pant legs approach the ankles. Regular jeans have a cut that has a straight or slightly flared leg.
Fit
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Skinny jeans fit tighter than normal jeans, sometimes to the point that they resemble leggings and make walking and squatting difficult. Designers have combatted this problem by adding spandex to the denim so the fabric is form-fitting but more flexible. A school district in a Dallas suburb specifically prohibits skinny jeans because of the tightness. The fit for regular jeans varies, but generally fits as other classic pants do---skimming the body, neither too tight nor too loose.
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Rise
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Since skinny jeans made a comeback in 2005, designers made them with lower waists, a trend carried over from the low-rise flared pants popular earlier in the decade. Skinny jeans made in the 1950s to 1980s had higher waists. Regular jeans now range from mid-to-low rise since the late 1990s, when high-rise jeans went out of style.
Alternate Names
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Skinny jeans are also called skinnies, stovepipes and jeggings. Premium denim brands often assign an ambiguous style name to their line of skinny jeans, such as 7 for All Mankind's "Jared" style for men. Denim manufacturers refer to regular jeans as straight-leg or classic cut.
History
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Slim-fitting pants have gone in and out of fashion over time. Women wore slim-fitting jeans beginning in the 1950s. Skinny jeans, called stovepipes at the time, became popular in the United States in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. They made a comeback in the early 2000s, spreading first to women's fashions and then to men's styles.
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References
- Photo Credit jeans... image by Saskia Massink from Fotolia.com
