When it comes to fashion power struggles, there is no greater battle than the one between baggy and skinny jeans. But now a new style is emerging, or is it an old one?
Goldilocks jeans – ie straight cut – have made a comeback. Think Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor, rather than Jeremy Clarkson’s bootcut Top Gear era or an indie band’s painted-on pip-squeezers.
Leon Hedgepeth, a menswear writer who coined the term “Goldilocks jeans”, describes the style as “not too skinny, not too baggy – just right”.
Levi’s’ bestselling jeans of all time – the 501, worn by everyone from Marlon Brando to Steve Jobs and Kate Moss – best encapsulates the shape.
Anne-Catherine Lepas, the vice-president of merchandising at Levi’s Europe, says the brand defines a straight cut such as the 501 as running evenly from hip to ankle, “creating a clean, effortless look that suits almost everyone”.
Sales of straight-cut jeans are up 30% year on year at John Lewis, with top sellers including a £260 pair from the US label Frame. On Thursday, the British department store chain released a collaboration with the designer Rejina Pyo. While a cropped fluffy jacket was tipped to be a favourite from the collection, instead the straight-cut jeans in a dark-blue wash are soaring to the top of the sales chart.
Elsewhere on the high street, six years after Marks & Spencer launched its Sienna straight-cut jeans, it is once again a bestselling style. Its recent Stovepipe iteration – which features a higher waist and less elastane, meaning it does not give as much, so hangs straighter – is also in demand.
This shift to normality points to consumers’ growing fatigue with fashion’s trend cycle. Micro trends that start on social media, often with the suffix “-core” – such as “Barbiecore” and “cottagecore” – have accelerated this shift even further, with some shoppers feeling constantly outmanoeuvred.
As a result, some consumers are giving their wardrobe a hard reset with a return to timeless basics. So less boom boom and more bore bore. A pair of jeans such as the 501s, which originated in 1873 and was commonly worn by miners, fulfil the brief. On Friday, Levi’s reported that revenues grew 7% to $1.5bn (£1.1bn) during its third fiscal quarter.
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Kay Barron, a fashion director and the author of How to Wear Everything, says despite 501s being more than 150 years old, “the straight leg and high-enough waist have remained consistent, and wearers have remained committed to them because they always work”. They can also be sourced secondhand, which appeals to more conscious shoppers.
Elsewhere, when Vogue revealed that Chloe Malle would be its new head of editorial content, the 39-year-old wore a pair of “normal” jeans in a photograph to accompany the announcement.
And it’s not just women – the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, favours a darker wash and trainers. Meanwhile, the designer Jonathan Anderson stuck to his signature style – vintage Levi’s – as he took a bow after his Dior womenswear debut at Paris fashion week. He has also included a pair of normies in his collaboration with Uniqlo, which launches next week.
Alongside trend fatigue, Hedgepeth credits 90s nostalgia and economic uncertainty with driving interest in normie denims. “A sluggish economy has everyone thinking twice before dropping £500 on novelty pants. Straight-leg jeans are the antidote: timeless, unfussy, and a safe bet that won’t make you regret not buying into the next skinny v baggy denim war.”