Jeans have been around in some form or another for more than 150 years, a time span that has given designers plenty of time to tweak the formula. The result is a denim landscape populated by a seemingly infinite variety of options, from 3sixteen’s old-school raw selvedge dungarees to Our Legacy’s postmodern Third Cut Jeans, whose surfaces are digitally printed with a trompe l’oeil of whiskering, tears, and abrasions. Between those two poles are every imaginable variation of cut, color, fit, fade, and fabric, with just about every clothing brand on the planet adding its own take.
And that’s to say nothing of the question of what’s in this season. Are skinny jeans back? Is the ‘90s mall jean revival the way forward? And what about stretch denim? For anyone contemplating a new jeans purchase, this panoply of choice makes things complicated, to say the least. To cut through the noise, we consulted a panel of dedicated denim-heads and industry insiders to advise on the way forward.
’90s Vibes Are Still Vibing
Whether or not you’re carrying a point-and-shoot film camera or listening to Stone Roses on repeat, the ’90s revival continues to gain momentum on all fronts, including jeans. According to Gerald Ortiz, GQ’s resident denim connoisseur, they’re here for the foreseeable future. “Though there’s undoubtedly a small but growing sect of slim-jean proselytizers/doomsdayers, the masses are still deep in the so-called ‘mall jeans’ of the ’90s, with their forgivingly relaxed silhouettes and uniformly faded light-wash denim,” says Ortiz. “We still haven’t gotten over that era of fashion, and it’s hard to imagine that we ever will.”
