Styles change but jeans are forever
As Everlane’s Sonia Martin says ‘jeans stand for individualism, informality and classlessness’, Annie Brown.
Forget the little black dress, when it comes to the piece of clothing with the most impact in fashion, you have to give it to humble denim jeans. For Anna Wintour’s first Vogue cover in 1988, she put a model in jeans.
Last month, Canadian singer Celine Dion was lauded for the truly spectacular outfits she wore to Haute Couture Week in Paris. A particular standout? A pair of Ksenia Schnaider asymmetrical jeans worn with a pink froth of feathers and a logo bag from Fendi (she also wears jeans in her shot for September’s US Harper’s Bazaar Icons issue).
Princess Diana’s 1990s off-duty denim looks – from the belted high-waisted ‘‘mum’’ jeans to cropped overalls – have become catnip for the Instagram fashion set, proving that, particularly when it comes to denim, what goes around comes around.
For a utilitarian, practically universal item (my baby wears them, my dad wears them, models wear them, Barack Obama made ‘‘dad’’ jeans famous), jeans have managed to inspire quite a lot of controversy.
There was Calvin Klein casting a 15-year-old Brooke Shields, in 1981, in an advertising campaign in which she cooed ‘‘nothing comes between me and my Calvins’’. Parisian fashion collective-turned-cult brand, Vetements, created jeans that zipped right down the, ah, middle.
And then there was time Australian label Ksubi sent rats as well as stone-washed jeans down the runway at Australian Fashion Week in the early 2000s.
Jeans have featured in some of pop culture’s most iconic moments, too. There was James Dean smouldering in his Levi’s and white shirt, Thelma and Louise’s title characters making a break for it in high-waisted jeans, and Bruce Springsteen on the cover of Born in the USA.
When the late, visionary fashion designer Alexander McQueen created his outrageous ‘‘bumster’’ jeans silhouette in 1993 for his debut Taxi Driver collection, he also kick-started the lowcut jeans trend that dominated the early 2000s. Think about Paris Hilton and Christina Aguilera on the red carpets at the time and you’ll soon remember the trend that is threatening to make a return.
It’s possible that we can tell a lot about societal mores, tastes and progress by the rise (and fall) of our jeans. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that highwaisted ‘‘mum’’ jeans, and wide-leg jeans, have been a big trend these past few seasons, alongside the rise of the #MeToo movement and women’s rightful anger at inequalities at home and work. In any case, jeans remain as relevant as ever. According to global fashion search platform Lyst, jeans are one of the most searched for items worldwide. In its Denim – A Data Deep Dive report, released last month, it found that skinny jeans were being overtaken by relaxed and straight-cut styles, that there was a 193 per cent increase in page views for sustainable denim brands, and that, yes, low-cut jeans are definitely making a comeback.
Kate McDonell, Australia and New Zealand lead merchant at Levi’s, says sustainability and personalisation have been the biggest shifts in consumer behaviour when it comes to jeans in recent years.
‘‘There is a modern consumer in Australia today, with an attuned sense of social responsibility. The brands they support in turn need to share these values. For Millennials and Generation Z in particular, it goes beyond a value set and demands a deep transparency of social responsibility, manufacturing, open sourcing, and stepping up, to really tackle change,’’ she says.
The brand’s ‘‘Tailor Shop’’ concept, which allows customers to customise and repair their favourite jeans, speaks to both of these trends.
In response to consumer demand, Levi’s is working towards an operating model for creating a ‘‘cleaner’’ jean and using more sustainable materials, such as ‘‘cottonised hemp’’, which feels like cotton, in some of its collections.
Brands such as Nobody Denim, which makes its clothes in Melbourne, offers mending services; America’s Everlane, which champions ‘‘radical transparency’’ in its processes and pricing; and Outland Denim (the Australian brand worn by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, on her 2018 tour of Australia), which supports women out of human trafficking, also fit in with the way consumers are increasingly aligning their values, as well as their personal style, to their jeans.
David Jones’ womenswear buyer Teneille Oakley says a key shift for the department store is