OVER THE past month, a particular photo of Ralph Lauren has been popping up persistently on my social-media feeds. It shows the Americana idol taking his bow after his company’s women’s fashion show in New York in 2005. His casual outfit (pictured, right) is ordinary for a designer performing a curtain call, except for one thing: The silver-haired Mr. Lauren is wearing supersize jeans. His mildly washed-out, barrel-cut denims make him look like a 1920s prospector or an ’80s b-boy about to pop and lock his way down the runway. They’re not quite as wide as JNCOs, the infamous ’90s jeans whose vast hems could accommodate a Subway footlong, but they’re still some spectacularly roomy jeans. And about 15 years after that photo was taken, the wide look is surging again.
Labels as haughty as Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta are selling gigundo tube-legged jeans for $595 and $980 respectively. For frugal denim-heads, Wrangler’s online shop offers 38 styles of “Relaxed” men’s jeans starting at $20. On Levi’s web store, the “Loose” selection of nine styles includes the “Stay Loose,” a very ’90s-esque baggy jean (pictured, below).
Janine Chilton-Faust, the global VP of men’s design at Levi’s, explained that this flowier style, released just last year, was inspired by contemporary “skate kids’’ who were purchasing wider vintage jeans—often in a waist size larger than their own for extra roominess. This generation is “really gravitating toward the looser, baggier fits,” she said. But Ms. Chilton-Faust noted that an older customer is also “coming back” to larger denim silhouettes like the Stay Loose.
This return of looser legs could be read as a long-gestating backlash to skinny jeans which, with hems as narrow as 5 inches, defined the denim market for the past two decades—Mr. Lauren’s defiance notwithstanding. In the recent past, Laird Mackintosh, 48, a New York City actor, wore jeans so slender that, when he SAT, they’d cling stubbornly to his calves, forcing him to tug them down for comfort. Roi Ferrer, 32, a technician at a Los Angeles pharmaceutical company, remained loyal to ultra-lean jeans through most of the 2010s. He said he was influenced by rapper and fashion impresario Kanye West, who nearly always paired calf-hugging jeans with his signature Yeezy Boost sneakers.
Like many, Mr. Ferrer now questions why he squeezed into skinnies for so long: Pulling on the comfortable straight-legged Levi’s 501s and 550s he wears now is like finally exhaling after years of sucking it all in. Kevin Ibanez, 29, a nursing assistant in San Diego, likewise comes up short when trying to explain his years in skinny jeans. Sure, they were a trend, but they didn’t suit his “hefty” stature, and he always struggled to find slim-cut jeans that fit him right. In the past year he’s discovered his “perfect” jeans: boot-cut Levi’s 517s that swing easily around his legs.
