Have Tik-Tok-ers sounded the death knell of the skinny jean?

 Less than a month ago in North Korea, that fashion staple in every woman's (and some men's) wardrobes,  the skinny jean, was banned. There are many reasons why skinny jeans could be deemed bad for you - low sperm count and yeast infections for starters, but North Korea decried the fashion fixture as Western capitalist propaganda, and outlawed it as such. 

According to Rodong Sinmum, the official newspaper of the North Korean government, Kim Jong-un has long expressed a concern about how young people are increasingly embracing Western fashion trends. Items long branded 'anti-socialist' and banned by the North Korean Republic, include ripped jeans, blue jeans, mullets, spiky and dyed hair, body piercings and clothing with foreign lettering (particularly Latin lettering) and trousers for women. And that's before we even start on Kim's short list of acceptable hairstyles. 

At the end of May,  skinny jeans were added to the ever-growing list of clothing deemed to support a 'capitalistic lifestyle' in the totalitarian state, and were outlawed.

Rodong Sinmum declared, 

“History teaches us a crucial lesson that a country can become vulnerable and eventually collapse like a damp wall regardless of its economic and defense power if we do not hold on to our own lifestyle. We must be wary of even the slightest sign of the capitalist lifestyle and fight to get rid of them.”

Skinny jeans were a staple of ‘00s indie fashion and became synonymous with certain bands of the era, such as the Libertines and Pete Doherty's sporting of the style.

Trainspotting

Trainspotting actor Ewen Bremner, who played Spud in the 1996 film, further claimed the film’s costume designer in fact helped popularise skinny jeans for men.

“Actually our costume designer Rachel Fleming basically invented skinny jeans for men with Trainspotting. They didn’t exist before!” he said in 2017. “She would take women’s jeans and re-stitch them, or men’s jeans and cut them apart and cut them apart and restitch them. That was down to her, that whole movement!”

Proper dress in North Korea is considered vital to the country’s health. According to the Guardian, a radio broadcast in 2005 titled, “Dressing in accordance with our people’s emotion and taste” informed North Koreans that looking tidy would keep the capitalists away and would promote “the socialist lifestyle of the military-first era.”

But is Kim Jong-un genuinely concerned about the danger imposed by the West, or is he jumping on the Tik-Tok bandwagon? For Mr Jong-un is not the only one out there cancelling skinny jeans. Back at the beginning of the year, Gen-Z sounded the death knell of the skinny jean, much to the chagrin of Millenials. According to Tik-Tok's Gen-Z, skinny jeans are officially cancelled, and Millenials are truly miffed.

The Ramones, wearing skinny jeans in the 1970s

Apparnently Gen-Z has spoken and we are all supposed to burn our skinny jeans in favour of flares, boot cut and straight legged denim. According to the latest fashionistas, skinny jeans are emblematic of the noughties - that period where men in their skinny jeans, wearing an American Apparel Hoodie rode their fixed gear bikes tore through our city streets whilst sipping the latest artisan coffee. 

The style was watered down, and soon enough everyTom Dick or Harry off Love Island was in the thightest pair of skinny skinny's  - the spray on kind, in white, and henceforth the death knell rung through the streets of every major city, declaring the style officially dead.

Even though I'm not a Gen-Z-er or a Millenial, I fall into the Gen-Z camp on this debate. Having gone through the past three lockdowns wearing the waftiest, loosest clothing I own, and therefore the thought of anything skintight on my legs brings me out in cold sweats, but the extra weight piled on through these lockdowns has made squeezing them on a physical impossibility even if I wanted to.

The Strokes, typical of 00s Indue bands who sported the style

Pandemic related style shifts aside, skinny jeans have been sliding their way off the hot list for a while now, and tumbling down slowly to join Ugg boots, PVC leggings and those super-silly mini handbags that no-one ever bought ever. The original male devotees of the trouser were the trendy 'I'm in the band' types who frequented Hackney and Camden and favoured the trouser style in dusty grey or black, and who fit into them due to a malnourished and debauched lifestyle (think Trainspotting and anyone affiliated to a British indie band in the nougthies). However, more recently the look has been appropriated by the Towie boys and every male contestant from Ex on the Beach or Love Island. Rather than wearing them to show off their slim twiglet legs, the point was to highlight their gym honed muscular thighs and bulging calves in the tightest, most spray on denim they could find, preferably in white and worn with Gucci loafers. The look went from Indie cool, to try hard cringe. Once your average Joe was squeezing into the style in every town centre up and down the country, skinny jeans had lost their subversive edge, and by 2021, Tik-Tokers had declared the style cancelled.

Hedi Slimane's Dior Homme show 2005 A/W

Without wanting to be sizist, the fact of the matter is, that skinny jeans only really look good on really skinny people. Former Dior Homme mastermind, Hedi Slimane, who credits himself with bringing the world the skinny jean (in fact, their roots are in 1970s punk rock culture when the first wave of skinny jeans were worn by the likes of the Ramones and David Bowie.) Slimane can indeed claim the crown of having brought them back for a second time however, when his sent a slew of boys down the runway in his 2005 Autumn/Winter show wearing his famed 'Dust Wash' denims and ushering in a new androgynous silhouette in menswear. The look was edgy, contorversial and cool and soon adopted by the likes of Pete Doherty, Kate Moss, the Horrors, Russell Brand.

 The look was 'anti-fashion', a subversive marker of 'outsider' culture. As Slimane himself reflected  when speaking to Yahoo! Style in 2015, on the connections between body shape, masculinity and fashion: “I was precisely just like any of these guys I photograph, or that walk my shows … Many in high school, or in my family, were attempting to make me feel I was half a man because I was lean, and not an athletic build. They were bullying me for some time, so that I might feel uncomfortable with myself, insinuating skinny was ‘queer’… I would turn to my music heroes, and this was comforting. They looked the same and I wanted to do everything to be like them, and not hide myself in baggy clothes to avoid negative comments.”

Kate Moss in skinnies

Russell Brand wore the style while presenting Big Brother's Big Mouth and brought the style into the public consciousness of those who might not have listened to the Indie bands currently adopting the trouser as their own. High-street stores began offering an array of skin-tight denim options for men. Slimane's silhouette has transcended its avant-garde origins. It had evolved into a visual signifier of being stylish, cool, and maybe rich enough to buy at Saint Laurent.

 Kate Moss brought the side up for the women. When Kate was embroiled in her cocaine scandal in 2005, it wasn't the white powder in the video that everyone was looking at, but her Superfine black skinny jeans. Kate's famous, slightly bow-legged silhouette was perfectly highlighted by the new style and she became the Queen of the skinny jean.

Love Islanders in their spray on uniform white jeans

The skinny jean has lost it's elitist punch however. As Slimane hints, it was never meant to be worn by bulging-thighed, gym rat's or muffin-topped mum's at the school gate. Not having ever been part of the noughties obsession with the skinny silhouette, and grown up in a more body positive world, Tik-Tok teens who have spent the best part of two years in pyjamas and tracksuits, appear to have adopted the tagline that beauty does not have to be pain, discomfort is passe, and skinny jeans just don't fit into their new world view of fashion.

Personally, my favourite jean style has always been a flare. Proper 'Charile's Angels' style, tight at the top, and bell-bottomed, sweeping the pavement as you strut. Think John Travolta in 'Saturday Night Fever'.  It flatters everyone and is the ideal silhouette for big hipped girls. I'll still keep my skinnies though - as a reminder of a time pre-lockdown, when fashion was uncomfortable and denim was low-rise. Also, skinnies can take you from day to a night out, in a way that flares can't. They show off your shoes or boots and make them a real feature of an outfit - for someone with as many shoes as myself, this is a huge bonus. And we all know that fashions are cyclical. It's only a matter of time before the next generation discovers the skinny jean and declares it the height of cool again. However, I do get that skinny jeans can, when you've put on a few pounds, can be unflattering, and why wear an item of clothing that clearly works against you? My mind is not made up on wiether to cast out my skinny jeans. So until I've properly worked myself out of my lockdown mindset, the jury is out.