why the return of the skinny jean? a rant.

[cultpop 0217]

im really sick of everyone crediting dior and hedi slimane with the resurgence of the skinny tapered jean.

everyone from mods and skins to preps and z boys to joey ramone and johnny thunders have been rocking skinny and tapered jeans since the 60's. sid vicious wore levis 606s and punks and art rockers like tv wore them tight in the 70's and 80's. and skaters like ali boulala started wearing tight jeans well before hedi even started at dior. its been a underground/punk staple for decades.

i always get in this argument with my sister who is fashion school right now but the zeitgeist as far as jeans and street fashion always seeps from the underground onto the catwalk not the other way around. christ even the strokes were wearing skinny tapered jeans before 2001.

look at any picture of london youth in the 60s and it looks like a hedi slimane runway show. hes just distilling mod and punk fashion from the last three decades and everyone calls it "fresh" and gets in line to suck his dick. not to mention he took raf simmons skinny suits and ran.

i admit that most trends do not gain any real momemtum or mainstream acceptance until designers and retailers embrace them but these paradigm shifts almost never start on the runways. they start on the street. on the legs and backs of art rockers or hipsters or retrochicks or in some youth subculture.

i think this current resurgance in skinny jeans has more to do with the retro/60's80's/dancepunk/70's nyrock thing (liars/rapture/hives/strokes/starspangles/dfa/babylibertishambles/yyy's etc... ) than slimane or apc. slimanes s/s 06 show was basically just a pete doherty/london 60's love fest.

laguy i agree with most of what youve said in other posts but im kinda sick of everyone calling this skinny jean thing a passing blip when its been prevalent in the underground forever and its true origins have been largely ignored. i mean im not trying to sound too cool for school but dark tight jeans just arent news to some of us and we dont need some fashion report or forecast to inform our style. we take our stylistic cues and inspiration from places far removed from the fashion world. i know that the fashion industry often walks hand in hand with the zeitgeist of music/underground fashion but its usually not the designers who are the avant garde imo.

its too bad style forum is down or i'd ask GET SMART to weigh in. i think he would agree with what im getting at.

having said that i think its great that because of trend/market changes i dont have to track down vintage levis or alter my jeans to get the look i want . im not saying i dont love a good bootcut now and again but the fashion world has always seems to be behind my particular tastes especially in denim.

like i said i love bootcuts as much as the next guy and i have jeans in all shapes from jr hobokens to vintage 646s. thats why it suprises me when denim trends shift and everyone acts like its a revelation as if someone has reinvented the wheel. its been happening every 5 years or so for the better part of a century now.

what im getting at is bootcuts and low rises were not a new idea then and skinny jeans are not new now. everything in fashion is borrowed from the past, even more so with denim.

p.s. thanks to haptronic for saving this from the waywt thread

Edited by cultpop 0217 on Feb 23, 2006 at 09:47 AM

Edited by cultpop 0217 on Feb 23, 2006 at 09:51 AM

[Cue]

you are right, it's plainly clear to anyone with half a brain.

but my question is: why has this become an argument on sf in the past few days?

there seem to be loads of posts banging on about bootcut vs skinny jeans trends that are a little too aggressive. where did all this come from?

[cultpop 0217]

my argument isnt really a bootcut vs. skinny jeans thing, its really more about the origin of the skinny jean resurgence.

i do think there is some debate as to whether or not this straight/skinny/tapered trend is a quick blip or if it will stick around for a while like bootcuts did.

as la guy has said bootcuts tend to be more "democratic" and look good on a wider variety of body types but when has what looked good equaled a trends popularity or staying power? people dont always wear what looks best on them.

i still remember the baggy tapered cavariccis of the 90's and the horrible acid washes of the 80's and that crap was everywhere.

and look at true religeon. i think they look pretty lame but they are huge right now.

there is always a reaction to hugely popular trends and we have pretty much seen full saturation of the destroyed/embellished low rise bootcut and i think the dark skinny thing is partly a reaction against that. i mean when shit starts showing up at target its played out.

i guess time will tell.

Edited by cultpop 0217 on Feb 23, 2006 at 11:04 AM

[giantreptile]

it's just the way of fashion; it's a pendulum. one extreme to the next. one season it's all about color, next it's all about black, and so on. but i must defend dior and slimane in that their regular jeans are really not that 'skinny'. they just have skinny models. some styles are the super slim with taper, but then so does every other brand of jean.

[Guest Fade to Black]

the thing is...i see everyone talkin about how Dior is being 'revolutionary' with Hedi's pushing of the indie aesthetic to full blown status where everyone is tryin to get a piece of the action...but Dior by Slimane wasn't even a jeans driven line up until about 3-4 seasons ago. To me the heart of Dior isn't in the jeans, and it bothers me when people associate them strictly with the skinny jeans, thrift store rocker look or whatever. Go look up the F/W 01-02 up to S/S 04 collections, to me that's the real Dior aesthetic...too bad I was too young to hop on the bandwagon then and didn't even hear about it until VotC

[Ted DiBiase]

of course man, there wil always be those who know and live by the true origins, but this "recent" trend has undeniably been fueled by the whole APC/Dior homme thing and a lot of people have just been following whats been flashing in front of their faces completely oblivious to the heritage its rehashed from. when the "passing fad" does in fact die out, they will just hop onto the next eager cock to drop a load of jizz down their throats.

the question is, are you true to your roots? if you have been down with the skinny look for a while, will you continue to do so, even if skinny tapered jeans hang on sales racks of every suburban mall?

its the same thing with the Nike Dunks, i do remember buying a few pairs when they were ignored and neglected on clearance racks for $30 (cause they were cheap and i was broke). now they are everywhere, some go for hundreds of dollars and kids will sleep on sidewalks to buy them. most of which think its some kind of new messianic answer to their prayers when its been sitting in dusty basements under their noses for the past 8 years. so am i a poser for continuing to wear dunks?

does this kind of "played out shit" deter you from doing what youve always been doing? or do you simply just accept the fact that trends simply sleep around, they come and go. sooner or later its coming to your neighborhood whether you like it or not.

no need to move out of your house, just sit tight and let the storm pass. it always does.

[cultpop 0217]

^^right on man.

some people follow fashion, some lead, and others just have natural style.

i say wear what you dig.

i have rocked chucks and slip ons forever and im not about to stop.

although this whole limited edition flashy colorway sneaker thing promted me to buy the plainest stark white slip-ons i could find. they look they have been spraypainted white.

Edited by cultpop 0217 on Feb 23, 2006 at 12:34 PM

[darkanimal]

I like how fashion cycles, since the kids who were too young when this fad came about can enjoy them now. I'm sure the kids doing the 80's thing right now are having lots of fun. I'm not gonna complain that there are too many labels doing skinny jeans, a few years back it's such a hunt to find this kind of style. It's just easier and better options now.

[englandmj7]

Dude, Hap, you told everyone to make a thread to discuss this and then you delete my comments?

What the hell man........

[let it go]

Edited by haptronic on Feb 23, 2006 at 01:15 PM

Edited by englandmj7 on Feb 23, 2006 at 02:54 PM

[cultpop 0217]

^wtf?

[haptronic]

^^

your comments were not about the topic, i.e. skinny jeans but actually an attack on a member, that is why i edited them.

[aLKayeL]

I still buy bootcut jeans. I love em. Skinny jeans just don't look good on me. Everytime I try them out I can't make myslef buy them.

Just buy what looks good on you, not buy what other ppl say is good.

[cultpop 0217]

^^for sure. by all means wear what looks good.

[iohan]

As most cycling things, i think you must see trends as a vital part for both the fashion industry and the urban networks & subcultures. These institutions are dependent of each other for their own survival.

Burberry fucked their image bigtime when they suddenly, through casuals, started to appeal to really weird people. This results in a changing-process of the casual-culture, as casuals want to keep their style clean while another group, in casual opinion, deforms it.

And so. The original creators of the style searches for new attributes in order to move away from the ones who deformed people's view of the checkers by pulling it to a sick level of overkill. "They stole the thing and fucked it up, therefore we must move away from it quick as fish".

Same goes when the casual thing became a small trend amongst young people, every kid starts to wear Stone Island - and the more experienced people of the subculture respond by searching for new stuff and/or starts cutting of the labels on their own SI garments.

This case is not more different as i see it. Of course skinny-jeans people as punks, mods and just pure fit-enthusiasts are appauled by the bare thought of some well exposed designer/brand fucking their thing over by throwing it in the hands of other crowds, but my point remains, everything has an end sooner or later and IT IS NEEDED to keep the wheels rolling.

Go ask yourselfs this: How the hell would it look if style didn't evolve?

knife chase..

Edited by iohan on Feb 23, 2006 at 09:05 PM

[RobbertJan]

About the first post with the argument that dior is just copying styles from the past, that's what fashion is isn't it? reviving things, i think there is hardly anything that is truly original in the fashion world today.

i agree with fade to black about the jeans not being the thing the real dior homme is about, hedi sort of lost his touch lately with the ss 06 as the worst and most commercial collection, but if you look at his earlier work at dior, Luster and Solitaire in particulair, i think that those collections were brilliant, in terms of hidden details, great tailoring etc.

the latest a/w 06/07 collection was in my opinion a return to form with the more formal look which is a lot harder to pull off than the obvious skinny jeans, suspenders look.

about the people hating on things cause they are commercial, why? just wear what you like and like someone said before the trend will be over in a while.

''I'm a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm/i'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb/I am the world's forgotten boy/The one who searches and destroys''...James Jewel Osterberg

[Brinbro]

Cultpop: Think of it like this; when you look at a piece of art and say "wow, I could have done this, why is this guy an artist?" realize that you DIDN'T DO IT: he did. That's part of what makes him an artist: his vision.

Same basic principle; I'm sure as all hell Hedi knows he's borrowing from the last 30 decades (no shit, any designer is) but he has done it in a way no one else has and brought it together very well. Again, something no one else has. Could you do it? Hell no. Has he done it? Yes.

[wild_whiskey]

Brinbro: so true.

No offense Cultpop, but I really can't stand it when someone says "I've always been ahead of the trends, people copy my style," etc. Cause truth be told, you're not. If you slip into the mindset of "im ahead of everyone else" youre just as much of a tool as the next.

[giantreptile]

Quote:

I think the majority of the influence for what will come next as for fashion in the US or England comes from what can be seen in the Williamsburg Brooklyn area. It seems like the style is starts (or recycled) here first and then within 6 months it makes it to SoHo and to the masses. What I'm curious about is Japans almost morbid infatuation with WWII era clothing.

--- Original message by partytaco on Feb 25, 2006 05:32 PM

sorry, williamsburg is soooooo 2004. it's all about berlin now!

[wild_whiskey]

Quote:

Quote:

I think the majority of the influence for what will come next as for fashion in the US or England comes from what can be seen in the Williamsburg Brooklyn area. It seems like the style is starts (or recycled) here first and then within 6 months it makes it to SoHo and to the masses. What I'm curious about is Japans almost morbid infatuation with WWII era clothing.

--- Original message by partytaco on Feb 25, 2006 05:32 PM

sorry, williamsburg is soooooo 2004. it's all about berlin now!

--- Original message by giantreptile on Feb 25, 2006 07:21 PM

Im pretty sure Hedi Slimane has stated that most of his influence came from Berlin.

[Joe E Taleo]

Quote:

I think the majority of the influence for what will come next as for fashion in the US or England comes from what can be seen in the Williamsburg Brooklyn area. It seems like the style is starts (or recycled) here first and then within 6 months it makes it to SoHo and to the masses. What I'm curious about is Japans almost morbid infatuation with WWII era clothing.

--- Original message by partytaco on Feb 25, 2006 05:32 PM

Coincidentally, tonight during dinner I had a conversation about the same thing, re: Japan's obsession with WW II era clothing. My friend mentioned a t-shirt he saw, something like 'Made in America, Sold in Japan', and the background had a mushroom cloud. We then chatted about how bizarre it is that Japan now makes the best repros of US military clothing from that era. I am now very curious about why this is.

Not that this has anything to do with skinny jeans. I would definitely wear them if I had skinny legs, but since I don't have the build of a thin guy, I'll just say with a tinge of envy that skinny jeans are a flash in the pan, and looked shitty on everyone except the Ramones.

[pokpok]

i have no hate for skinny jeans... what i do hate is ppl with fat legs wearing skinny jeans...umm..it llooks bad on you damn it..

[Serge d Nimes]

If you read the "story" page on the engineered garments website you will find a little insight:

http://www.engineeredgarments.com/

Carpe Denim! (not the jean brand silly!)

Edited by Serge d Nimes on Feb 25, 2006 at 11:30 PM

[badace900]

I like this topic, i agree with cult, very much so.

[cultpop 0217]

Quote:

Brinbro: so true.

No offense Cultpop, but I really can't stand it when someone says "I've always been ahead of the trends, people copy my style," etc. Cause truth be told, you're not. If you slip into the mindset of "im ahead of everyone else" youre just as much of a tool as the next.

--- Original message by wild_whiskey on Feb 25, 2006 05:06 PM

brian,

i never said i was ahead of the trends or that people copy my style.

i try to stay relatively trend free.

my whole point had more to with the origin/inspiratrion for said trend or style. that style being skinny tapered jeans.

i mean this is a style/fashion forum right? its ok to discuss things like the cyclical nature of fashion and recycling of ideas and where (imo) those ideas are being recycled from.

[mixedup]

i think most people are aware that this is what fashion designers do (for the most part). some designers are more blatant/obvious about it, though...i remember anna sui latching onto the whole "mod" thing (which has obviously been around for YEARS). it had already become "trendy", and months and months after the fact, she was acting like she had revived this whole look. lame.

[haptronic]

i agree with cultpop and now mixedup, it is often [but not always] the case that designers collections have there ispiration not so much in history but actually from street fahion, and then selling those ideas to people with more money

especially after dior homme s/s '06 and the slavish copy of mod/skinhead style, openly inspired by pete doherty, it hard to imagine anybody beleiving that the cycle of influence goes the other way

[skecr8r]

Brinbro: true - but so could be saif of so many other things. Like the point, though.

Now.

You people advocating against the tight-fittings are so behind. I'm an arrogant twat, but GOD you are.

1. The skinny jeans was NOT introduced as a part of the rock look, moron. Moron doesn't even describe your total lack of ignorance on the subject, whereof I would be writing an essay for school instead of wasting my time responding to something you shouldn't have begun in the first place.

If you go back in time, and I talk beyond your little NEO-rock-mod-emo world, let's say, 1995, the entire beauty phenomenon of the masculine identity was based off what Tom Ford did, not necessarily as a designer, but what he forced the world to realize: that sex is indeed the foundation for fashion. How people today say they weren't influenced; they just didn't realize the indirect pressure.

When Hedi Slimane begun working at YSL, he changed direction again, heading towards the extreme power that lies in the androgyny look. When you take a look at the older collections, they featured unparalleled slim-fitting items. The inspiration back then lay in the French haute-couture shows of the 50's & 60's, the true female identity and also by the French house movement of the late 90's.

The true androgyny style melts these two incomparable fashions together in new and originals way, and the look provided the male with an entire new array of fashion choices. The feminine touch was beautifully executed. This extreme forced the male body into showing its proportions instead of hiding them. This is the major, radical shift in FASHION.

CULTURE on the other hand, changes when entirely different forces are at hand. Social status, the necessarity of counterculture, politics. Culture is what initially created the scene of rock & roll, not fashion. While yes, the underground culture does affect fashion, this wasn't the case back then. Stars formed the fashion of generations back then, as they does now. The largest majority are influenced not by Dior Homme but by trend-fixated magazines and styles superstars. A rock revival has not been initiated by Dior Homme; Dior Homme has simply just reacted to this, and done better than most others.

Raf Simons, who's also often credited with inventing the slim look, took a different approach, and had a different outcome. While Slimane searched after uniting the genders into one, merging everything that stood out as clearly masculine or clearly feminine into a unified look, Simons were simply using underground cultures and influence by performance artists to create what he called a "re-definition of shape", the slim look.

Simons, being the worlds probably best credited avant-garde designer, therefore received enormous credit for his A/W98-99, S/S99 and absolutely also S/S98, the 'rock'-one, collections. These powerful collections derived from probably the most foreseeing designers in fashion surely changed the understanding of how the modern man was to dress in the new millennium.

You'd be in need of reading this: http://users.telenet.be/rafsimons/bioraf.jpg

This combined changed, as said, the way we concieved male clothing.

Slim clothing was now a result of not culture, but fashion. Today, when the rockers blatantly copy societys problems and visions of the 60's, they are the true copycats. Not designers as Hedi Slimane or Raf Simons. They are only visionaires of the true male evolution. People like you have simply not yet realized so, nor actually researched enough to draw any kind of logical conclusion.

Dior Homme has, by the way, only very recently been so compromised by the modern look of the rockers.

When you haven't got the slightest clue about fashion history except the one presented to you in contemporary magazines and on horrible style websites, you are not allowed to argue.

I feel sorry for your sister.

<hr size=1 color="#999999" noshade width=250

[rnrswitch]

I see a denim/fashion/internet chat room beef coming.

[cultpop 0217]

Quote:

Brinbro: true - but so could be saif of so many other things. Like the point, though.

Now.

You people advocating against the tight-fittings are so behind. I'm an arrogant twat, but GOD you are.

1. The skinny jeans was NOT introduced as a part of the rock look, moron. Moron doesn't even describe your total lack of ignorance on the subject, whereof I would be writing an essay for school instead of wasting my time responding to something you shouldn't have begun in the first place.

If you go back in time, and I talk beyond your little NEO-rock-mod-emo world, let's say, 1995, the entire beauty phenomenon of the masculine identity was based off what Tom Ford did, not necessarily as a designer, but what he forced the world to realize: that sex is indeed the foundation for fashion. How people today say they weren't influenced; they just didn't realize the indirect pressure.

When Hedi Slimane begun working at YSL, he changed direction again, heading towards the extreme power that lies in the androgyny look. When you take a look at the older collections, they featured unparalleled slim-fitting items. The inspiration back then lay in the French haute-couture shows of the 50's & 60's, the true female identity and also by the French house movement of the late 90's.

The true androgyny style melts these two incomparable fashions together in new and originals way, and the look provided the male with an entire new array of fashion choices. The feminine touch was beautifully executed. This extreme forced the male body into showing its proportions instead of hiding them. This is the major, radical shift in FASHION.

CULTURE on the other hand, changes when entirely different forces are at hand. Social status, the necessarity of counterculture, politics. Culture is what initially created the scene of rock & roll, not fashion. While yes, the underground culture does affect fashion, this wasn't the case back then. Stars formed the fashion of generations back then, as they does now. The largest majority are influenced not by Dior Homme but by trend-fixated magazines and styles superstars. A rock revival has not been initiated by Dior Homme; Dior Homme has simply just reacted to this, and done better than most others.

Raf Simons, who's also often credited with inventing the slim look, took a different approach, and had a different outcome. While Slimane searched after uniting the genders into one, merging everything that stood out as clearly masculine or clearly feminine into a unified look, Simons were simply using underground cultures and influence by performance artists to create what he called a "re-definition of shape", the slim look.

Simons, being the worlds probably best credited avant-garde designer, therefore received enormous credit for his A/W98-99, S/S99 and absolutely also S/S98, the 'rock'-one, collections. These powerful collections derived from probably the most foreseeing designers in fashion surely changed the understanding of how the modern man was to dress in the new millennium.

You'd be in need of reading this: http://users.telenet.be/rafsimons/bioraf.jpg

This combined changed, as said, the way we concieved male clothing.

Slim clothing was now a result of not culture, but fashion. Today, when the rockers blatantly copy societys problems and visions of the 60's, they are the true copycats. Not designers as Hedi Slimane or Raf Simons. They are only visionaires of the true male evolution. People like you have simply not yet realized so, nor actually researched enough to draw any kind of logical conclusion.

Dior Homme has, by the way, only very recently been so compromised by the modern look of the rockers.

When you haven't got the slightest clue about fashion history except the one presented to you in contemporary magazines and on horrible style websites, you are not allowed to argue.

I feel sorry for your sister.

[haptronic]

it a pity that both arguements have so many insults.

i just want to add to what cultpop 0217 has already said by saying,

playing with gender identity in mens fashion has been around for as long as men have been wearing clothes, an older example is victorian era dandyism.