With their origins in the taper leg styled pants of fifties heart throbs such as Roy Rogers and Marilyn Monroe, skinny jeans are undoubtedly still imbued with a little of the rebellious glamour that typified such stars – especially as the style became inexorably linked with the birth of rock and roll when Elvis Presley adopted the style to the delight of swooning teenage girls everywhere.
Between country musicians and the new proponents or rock, a bad boy image was born and skinny jeans were the trousers of choice for these new stars. The image remains today, and despite some periods of time when the style fell out of favour, skinny jeans have always had a niche role in the fashion stakes with skinny jeans showing their musical roots at every turn.
Perhaps the toughest period for skinny jean lovers was in the late sixties, when flares where adopted by hippies and the wider the trouser leg the better the opinion of the jeans. However, the seventies brought a new wave of popularity for drainpipes and glam rock and rockabilly bands breathed new life into the fifties Teddy Boy look and skinny jeans were brought to the forefront again. The seventies also saw the punk scene adopt the figure hugging jeans and customising them to fit their wild and do-it-yourself aesthetic.
But the versatile nature of the skinny jean ensured that the style wasn’t pigeonholed and in the eighties many heavy metal bands also turned to these denim wonders to satisfy their desire to avoid the spandex popular elsewhere in the industry. While the grunge movement drew a number of music fans towards a trend for baggier jeans, the skinny ones remain the favourites of die-hard fans who were again rewarded with a resurgence in the noughties.
A fresh buzz was injected into the tight denim trousers in the UK in the early 2000s when bands such as The Strokes, and later The Libertines, chose them as their jeans of choice while supermodel Kate Moss is often credited with reintroducing the style to women.
Skinnies then made their way into more mainstream fashion and indie pop, while still retaining a niche core of fans within sub-culture genres such as emo, metal and post-punk. The new popularity of the tight trousers slowly made its way across to the US and with scenesters and indie rockers also claiming the style as their own, skinny jeans have become a must have item for anyone hoping to inject a little rock and rock into their wardrobe.
By: vicky.cochrane.uk@googlemail.comAbout the Author:
Emo Boy
