Millennials are in their mom jeans era

Millennials, welcome to your mom jeans era. I don't mean that you're obligated to wear the jeans you made fun of your own mother for wearing 20 years ago. Those are actually cool now! The uncool fit is those skinny jeans you practically slept in during the 2010s. Oh, and Gen Z, before you laugh, that combo of loose-leg light-denim jeans and white sneakers you love will date you soon enough. And to the teens sporting the modern-day version of JNCO jeans, your Gen X aunts don't know whether to feel proud of you or laugh at you behind your back.

Jeans are a staple of most people's wardrobes. The garment is a durable, democratic basic — a versatile piece that, depending on how you style it, can be worn to the grocery store, a night on the town, and even work. Jeans are also among the most fraught and volatile attire we own. For an item thought of as timeless, jeans are anything but. Waistlines rise and fall, legs widen and narrow, and what felt modern just a few seasons ago can suddenly seem embarrassingly outdated. And because jeans are worn so often and sit so closely to the body, these shifts can feel quite personal.

Jeans are a Rorschach test for identity, belonging, and aging. As trends evolve at internet-accelerated speeds, it can feel impossible to keep up. For women, the pressure is especially acute.

Your pants may be designed to last, structurally, but they're not meant to endure, culturally.

"The fashion industry builds in this social obsolescence," says Carolyn Mair, a behavioral psychologist who specializes in the fashion business. "However well we try to phrase it, looking old is something that most people do not aspire to."

Shara Seigel is at a crossroads with jeans. She wore skinny jeans throughout most of her young adult years, and she built up an even bigger collection when she lost a significant amount of weight four years ago. She felt proud to show off her new figure, until some of her friends — including fellow millennials — started making fun of her look. Seigel, who's 40 and works in New York City at a public relations firm, has tried to expand her pants collection, but she feels like the new, baggier styles aren't flattering.

"Everyone looks like they're wearing a potato sack," she says.

Seigel has bought some updated styles that she feels are a "happy medium," including flared legs and looser fits, but she's not spending much money on them. "You get to an age, probably as a millennial, where you're like I don't need to keep up with the fashion to be cool," she says. Plus, what if skinny comes back?

For millennials, skinny jeans were more than a trend — they were a uniform. Waistlines and washes may have changed throughout the 2000s and 2010s, but the tight, tapered fit did not. "It was really hard to not see a skinny jean," says Sonya Abrego, a design historian based in New York. "But then the pendulum swung so hard in the other direction."

Wide-leg, baggier styles started to become the de facto silhouette for influencers and fashion-forward people around 2017, says Susie Draffan, a senior denim strategist at trend forecasting firm WGSN, but it took the average consumer a while to catch up. There's always a lag between the runway and the mass market, which was extended by pandemic lockdowns. We missed fashion cues we might otherwise pick up by osmosis from just seeing each other, and the pandemic exacerbated the trend toward comfort. The people working from home were doing so in sweatpants and leggings, not Levi's.

Post-pandemic, we've seen a "democratization" of denim, Draffan says. "Multiple styles are trending simultaneously, as consumers swap between jean silhouettes to suit their outfits and moods," she says.

Unfortunately for millennials, even as multiple styles have shared a synchronous moment, skinny jeans are not on the current "it" list. Sales of skinny jeans declined in 2021 for the first time in a decade. Like ankle socks and the side part, they've turned into a signifier of a cohort that is no longer ascendant.

"Skinny jeans make you look old," Abrego tells me.

The upside: Draffan says skinny jeans are "due for a revival," thanks to 2010s nostalgia and GLP-1s. Thin is in again, and denim is transforming accordingly.

The capitalist churn around denim runs deeper than the revolution between skinny and wide-leg and back again. Jeans occupy an unusually loaded spot in our wardrobes. They're not just a top we only expect to keep for a season or a pair of pants we toss on to go about our days — they tie into youth, identity, and social belonging.

When we talk about jeans, we're not just talking about the garment. Jeans are a vehicle for commenting on, thinking about, and forming social expectations around the body that's inside the jeans, Emma McClendon, a fashion historian, says. A shift in styles can change how a body is read — and, by extension, how its wearer is perceived.

"Since the later 20th century, there's really been a very strong connection between jeans and the body and also jeans and sex and sexuality," says Emma McClendon, a fashion historian. From about the 1970s on, brands such as Jordache and Calvin Klein have shifted much of their marketing and product development toward fashion-forward silhouettes, harnessing the power of sex to sell jeans to women. Just look at the infamous Brooke Shields Calvin Klein ad from 1980, or Sydney Sweeney's provocative American Eagle ad last year.

Or look at the body politics around mom jeans — the relaxed-fit, high-waisted, lightly tapered cut that middle-aged women were skewered for in the late 1990s and 2000s. Saturday Night Live went as far as to parody them in a 2003 sketch, poking fun at how unfashionable they were.

"It became a cultural joke or a cultural punchline that women of a certain age were not comfortable wearing the prevalent style of jeans," McClendon says.

When we're no longer seen as trendy, we may feel our social value drop. As much as our jeans are supposed to be long-lasting and timeless, when they become outdated, it destabilizes our self-perception. In turn, that nudges us to buy a new pair to keep up.

"We want to buy durable products, but at the same time, we have these products with built-in social obsolescence that we then have to replace with something," Mair, the behavioral psychologist, says. "Otherwise, our identity is challenged. We see ourselves as part of the day, part of the modern, progressive way of looking."

Denim-related anxiety isn't shared equally among genders. While men's styles do evolve, they do so more slowly. Many men can buy the same cut year after year without anyone saying a peep. Women's jeans cycle through much faster, and societally, women have more pressure to look the part. They're judged more harshly on appearance and face greater stigma as they age. Women can hop off the pants roller coaster, but men have an easier time doing it. A man wearing the same Levi's 501s from college to his 50th birthday is timeless; a woman doing the same would get some eye rolls.

Denim itself is very trendy at the moment. There was concern about a decade ago that athleisure might pose a real threat to the fabric's extraordinary staying power, but we're now firmly in a denim renaissance — a denim-ssance, if you will. The exploding number of shapes, silhouettes, and styles can be overwhelming. Designers and brands are experimenting with different waistbands, cuts, washes, and lengths. Moreover, trends cycle through faster than ever, thanks to the internet. Consumers don't just notice in fashion magazines or on TV that their style might be lagging, they have a TikTok influencer in their face telling them the thing they love is "cheugy," though that pejorative is probably outdated now, too.

This works to the fashion industry's advantage: Pushing you to grab those cross-waistband jeans you keep seeing advertised on Instagram or pick up cargo pants again against your better judgment is great for their bottom line.

It is, of course, possible to resist trend-chasing. Aja Barber, a consultant and writer who focuses on sustainability and fashion, says there comes a point when many people decide to opt out of the "circus." "You can try and shame people, but any person that has a real sense of self just does not care," she says. And if you do want to update, there are plenty of ways to shop secondhand. Denim production is a highly water-intensive and polluting process, so it's environmentally friendly to take advantage of the fact that a lot of what's new again is actually old. "There's nothing new under the sun when it comes to jeans," she says.

One of the nice things about the current boom is that it's an opportunity to try out a variety of styles to figure out what works best for you. Instead of lamenting the loss of your skinny jeans, rejoice in the freedom of variation!

That's what Stephanie Borman, a 39-year-old tech worker in San Francisco, has been doing. Her body changed after having her two children, prompting her to do some reflecting on her fashion choices. "I thought, gosh, why am I continuing to squeeze myself into a style that doesn't serve me or my body type anymore and just might not be culturally relevant?" she says. Coming of age — accompanied by the budget afforded by a stable career — has allowed her to explore and invest in styles that suit her. It doesn't mean she's entirely free of millennial-induced insecurities — her kids recently made fun of her jeans for looking like something their dad would wear, and when she's tried to wear her hair in the Gen Z-approved middle part, she thinks it makes her look Amish.

A lot of people have a lot of feelings about jeans. Reporting for this story, I heard from a variety of women about their gripes. Why are all the jeans right now a smidge too short? What's going on with frayed bottoms? Is it true that ultra-low-rise is coming back? A friend mentioned a man she dated a couple of years back told her he didn't like it when women wore updated looser jeans styles — he was into fitted and skinny jeans only. It didn't work out.

Many consumers have some memory of fitting-room jeans trauma. I remember standing in a Madewell dressing room a couple of years ago, overhearing a sales associate explaining to a customer — likely a millennial — that she just needed to get used to seeing her legs in wider jeans. I needed the advice, too. Whether certain styles work for certain wearers isn't just about age or style, it's about body type, and it can feel incredibly frustrating when the trendiest silhouettes just don't work for your shape. Tori Mattei, 29, a communications professional in New York City, tells me she's all but given up on jeans at this point. "As a 4'11" woman who's definitely not stick thin, they are not made for me," she says. "What's stylish doesn't always look good on your body."

I sometimes joke that this should be the final stage of jeans — even though skinny is out (to my millennial chagrin), so many other styles are in, and the looser ones really are comfy. It would be incredible if the diversity of denim looks just stuck. But past is prologue, meaning trends will inevitably evolve, and everyone will at some point look dated. It's a hallmark of getting older. It's important to remember, as McClendon notes, "It doesn't make you cultural garbage."

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.