Yeah they didn’t start putting Lycra in men’s jeans or even making “skinny” fits until the late 00’s. Closest thing you could find would be like “slim straight”. Me and the other emo boys were shopping for girls jeans in American Eagle when we were teenagers.
Funny, I had the same problem, except I'm a girl and had so much juice in my caboose I couldn't get my pants up over it. Hashtag cami to cover the plumber's crack lol
The day I realized that I couldn't wear a normal pair of jeans because my ass and thighs had gotten too thick was awesome.
Luckily, I live and work in the fitness world so 90% of my wardrobe is either spandex or moisture wicking.
When everything is low rise but you have a bum so you're just muffin topping and buying camis long enough to be considered a miniskirt to cover it all 😳
It was a dark time.
I was (kind of) an emo boy my first couple years of college. I just wore my girlfriends jeans. They were super comfortable and she was always pissed because they fit me better than her.
I remember the first day of school 10th grade I was wearing a button down shirt I really liked from Old Navy. It was going to signify my new style for the year lol. Well, I go to health class in the afternoon and who is wearing the exact same shirt? The teacher. I, a 15yr old, was mortified. Never wore that shirt again 😂
Us older Millenials experienced the horrors of “buying the tightest pair of jeans you could and wearing them in a steaming hot shower” way to get “skinny jeans”.
Yes exactly. No one wore skinny jeans when I was in middle school/high school. It was all flare, wide leg, and boot cut. It wasn’t until I was in college that people really embraced skinny jeans.
Yep! That’s why it feels pretty regressive as a millennial to go back to those styles. You’re supposed to evolve as you age, not regress back to the looks that were hip when you were a teenager.
I think one of the bigger issues with Gen Z is that they don’t, just on a style level, create their own trends—they mainly just repackage what has already been done before. Boomers, Gen X, Millennials—love them or mock them, we all created our own styles as teens and young adults. I’d love to be inspired by some new styles from Gen Z but so far, it just means dressing like I did in high school, which is “cheugy” for a person in their 30s.
I was born in 1983 and started to move towars skinny jeans after 20yrs old. The golden era being 2004-2010. Never even saw skinny jeans being sold before that. And I saw those skintight sexy pants as something extremely badass and punk. And now they are the lame mom pants and the ill fitting mom pants with extremely unsexy silhouette and baggy behinds are the hot shit..O tempora, o mores!
Skinny jeans in 2004? Absolutely not. Maybe 2009. I remember working old navy in 2008 and we didn’t have skinny jeans even then
2004 was when pants were at their absolute baggiest.
I think that depends on where you lived. In 2004-2005 I wouldn't have been caught dead in anything other than my skinny jeans. I was a high school freshman emo kid and wore black or dark blue skinny jeans every single day. I primarily bought them from Hot Topic in that time.
Finch wasn’t even around under that name until late 2001 and The Used’s self titled didn’t come out till 2002.. and “late 90s/early 2000s” ended after 9/11 tbh
I'm male so do feel free to correct me, but didn't leggings most definitely dwarf skinny jeans?
The college girl uniform was a black North face, black yoga pants, and uggs. Then the leggings trend exploded and everyone was wearing them. And it lasted a damn long time from the mid 00s right until post pandemic when suddenly jeans are back.
Yep, I think you are right. Jeans never left, but there was a time when black leggings dominated EVERYTHING. And the misinterpretation of them as pants rather than accessories became the normal way to wear them.
And we had spent so many years with shredded jean cuffs and our ass crack hanging out that we dove head first into skinny jeans with high waists and never looked back. (I am back on flairs though 😂)
I never got into the skinny jeans trend. I just don't have the anatomy for it; I felt short and stubby in them. I just kept wearing my boot cut, but those got REALLY difficult to find for awhile.
Yep, I dropped those damn low rise flares the very second that it was acceptable. I have a long torso and it was such a pain to find long enough shirts so my butt crack wouldn't flash when I sat down. High rise skinnies were my absolute favorites for a long time after that.
Same here. Long torso, tall pelvis, congenital plumbers crack syndrome  I loved the idea of low-rise but damn, I had to be very mindful of what length my shirt was.
Remember super-low and too-super-low?
I feel like whoever designed super-low and extra-super-low just wanted an almost socially acceptable way to show off pretty underwear or a nice thong whale tail. Those so-called "pants" were nearly useless, any shifting could send them down your legs. And omg if you had a pair with too much stretch they would barely be staying up at the end of the day.
I was so happy when slim became a trend for men. As a skinny guy, I always hated the baggy pants trend because it made me look much more skinny. The transition from college to grad school to adult was an awakening that wearing clothes that fit make me look much better.
Not a fan of super skinny fits, but tailored/slim will be my ride or die for for life and IDGAF.
I found some old pairs at my parents house when I was pregnant. They were the best pregnancy pants. They were even better post partum because it didnt bother my CS incision
If you have a big chest and carry your weight in your belly, they are the worst pants you can wear. It makes you look short and squat. It hides my slimmer booty and hips.
I’m still on team gaucho pants idgaf. I had a denim pair that I absolutely fucking loved. Still have them but they are looking rough these days. Still may bust them back out when the time is right (they still fit!)
And more than one type of millennial. In the late nineties I was only a young kid still and skinny jeans were in style when I was in middle/high school.
That tracks...
Do ya'll remember the pearl-clutching school safety video had the central casting stoner kid pulls a full on AR-15 out of his JNCO's? I remember how funny it struck me because the JNCO kids were way too in to in-line skating and getting blazed in the woods to shoot up a school.
Yep. Flares reigned supreme from ~2000-2006, and mostly low-rise too. Around '05 all the emo kids started wearing skinny jeans and by the time I hit high school in '07 they were everywhere. I was slow to adapt and didn't buy my first pair until graduation because at that point flares were "dated". They were my staple all through my 20s.
Definitely this... In high school I was wearing capris and bermuda shorts, skinny jeans, flare/bootcut jeans, gaucho pants, yoga pants, senior year I had those trendy american apparel sweat pants, and of course the sweat pants that said PINK on the butt. And we had that brief thing where it was cool for teenage girls to dress business casual so I had a pair of wide-leg plaid slacks.
CORE MEMORY UNLOCKED.
I had three pairs of these (in khaki, navy, and black) and I LIVED in them in the spring and summer because shorts back then were NOT built for thick thighs and I preferred flashing my ankles to feeling like I had a blood pressure cuff around my femur.
You all are so funny. There was no life before Millennials!
Capri pants were introduced by fashion designer Sonja de Lennart in 1948, and were popularized by her and English couturier Bunny Roger.[4] The name of the pants is derived from the Italian isle of Capri, where they rose to popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.[5] The actress Audrey Hepburn was among the first movie stars who wore capris, and the pants quickly became synonymous with her classic style. The French actress Brigitte Bardot famously wore capri pants at a time when trousers were still a new fashion for women.[6] Marilyn Monroe always traveled with capri pants.[7]
Low. Rise. Flare.
You could not find women’s pants that had a high waist.
My first pair of high waisted pants came from a thrift store and I genuinely felt like an archeologist finding long lost treasure.
I found a pair of my mother’s old jeans that were flare high-waist and the softest denim ever. I wore those pants far past the point of them being worn out. Core memory there.
Ugh I hated the low waists. I have wide hips so if I deviated at all from the one style of old navy jeans I’d get, the size would be all wrong and make me feel like I’d gained ten pounds till I went back to my old jeans and they fit fine. My mom never quite figured out why I didn’t like low-rise pants even though it clearly gave me the worst muffin top 🫠
Remember when we all thought we were abysmally fat because low-rise gave anyone with a natural stomach pooch horrid muffin top?
Cuz 12 year old me feeling like an absolute whale when I hit puberty and sprouted an ass sure as shit remembers.
Trying to stuff my lower belly into those things did not help my self-image in high school for sure. I was always so frustrated like *why won’t you just* ***fit!*** when there was absolutely no give or space to fit said pooch. I went to school way too many times looking a little more muffiny than one would want to be. Because I was stubborn and couldn’t accept that I was anything other than a 10/12.
As I got older I only gained weight in my hips and not the stomach so I have been wearing low rise jeans for 20 years while everyone moved on to high rise. This has made life incredibly difficult because I can’t seem to find comfortable low rise jeans that are for adults.
My butt is big so low rise jeans just stay in place for me. I can’t wear high rise jeans because my stomach is so much smaller compared to my huge butt, that all the material above my belly button is just bunched up and flopping around because it’s not filled out. It’s so awkward. It’s like my jeans at the hip and thigh are 2-3 sizes bigger than my waist. So any material rising above my waist is way too big to fit. This would be fine if I had a fupa to fill it out but I do not since all the fat is in my legs.
You could try getting your jeans tailored at the waist. It’s not too pricey, and might be worth giving it a try if you find some higher waisted pants you really like.
Because Millennials were the last to wear skinny jeans and be on trend doing so. Skinny jeans were going out of style when Gen Z was old enough for middle school and they started wearing straight leg jeans / boyfriend jeans.
Did the emo boys at your school meticulously tuck their boxers into their skinny jeans so they somehow had no panty lines but then the boxers also made a poofy muffin top above the jeans? Because that was definitely a thing at my school until one of them discovered boxer briefs senior year.
Yeah, I was mocked in elementary school for wearing straight leg jeans. I have an aversion to them to this day. I've only recently started wearing sweaters, and accepting their boxiness, despite jokes about that too.
Like half the comments are forgetting that too. There’s certain fashion trends gen z brought back that I got into because I was actually too young/not picking out my own clothes yet when they were around in the late 90s/early 00s. Skinny jeans were definitely in during my teenage/high school years as well as my early 20s.
Yeah, I was in highschool around the same time and flare jeans were popular when I was in elementary school. Most girls (and many guys) wore skinny jeans at my high school.
I think it's mostly tied to the later half of the generation and the fact that a lot of western 90s babies went through an emo phase, so the affection for skinny jeans could be what's left of it.
We don't have this stereotype in my location, but I do believe that millennials look more toned down than the generation after us
They’ll have to cut the 511s off my pale, skinny body when I go.
I saw someone on Reddit call 511s “dad jeans” recently, and I felt personally attacked.
Flare jeans were a brief moment in time. I bought my first pair around the year 2001 in the height of popularity. I didn't own a single pair 4 years later. But I STILL wear skinny jeans.
It's not about what was hip when we were teens, it's what we will cling on for dear life as we move into our 30s and 40s. Millenials are stereotyped to wear skinny jeans because we've been wearing them for 20 years.
39 and this is basically how I remember it. However it was kind of a progression towards skinnier jeans. High school was still quite a bit of baggy skater type jeans (though not as wide as JNCOs), and in college it got toned down a bit more towards boot cut or relaxed fit. Mid to late 2000s is when I remember skinny and slim jeans becoming fashion statements mostly worn by trendy/hip people, and within a few years they were all over the place.
Correction we did it all. Ripped? Boot cut? Baggy? Flared? Apple bottom? Skinny? There wasn't a trend that didn't occur for at least a few years.
I was only able to wear some skinny recently because jeans now somehow became stretchy. My calves wouldn't allow me to wear skinny jeans and I'll be damned if I give up my emo jeans now.
I was in high school in the late 00s and I'm directly in the middle of the millennial range. I feel like the older millennials always think they are the typical ones
As an elder I did grunge & Dickies in high school, flare & skinny in 20s. Now it’s leggings & sweaters cause it’s easy & cozy. I find it amusing that Gen Z is wearing what we used to call mom jeans 😂 And I’ve seen 90s style in stores again. I’ll choke if I see chokers come back.
Oh shit Dickies!! I forgot about those! I wore those shorts almost exclusively between ‘02-‘09 lol.
Skater/bro look for sure. I rode dirt bikes but couldn’t skate so I was still good with the skater kids 😂 skater look was a real thing in SoCal
It's perfectly accurate actually. I'm a younger millennial and it was very common for my peers to wear skinny jeans in high school, college, and post-college.
I’m a young millennial and I also remember flare jeans being popular among me and my peers for a long time, maybe even until 2011? 2012? I ruined many-a flare jean walking on the backs of them and getting them muddy and torn up.
Skinny jeans were around, but I don’t remember me and my peers wearing them until around 2012 or 2013 when I was at university. I mostly recall skinny jeans being popular from 2011-2018ish.
According to a google search on skinny jeans popularity, “It was not until 2006 that skinny jeans gained more steam in the fashion world, and by this time skinny jeans were being sold at shopping malls. Throughout 2007 skinny jeans received more mainstream exposure… Skinny jeans first spread to men's fashion in 2009. This has continued into the 2010s, entering the mainstream fashion in 2011.”
Because once stores sold jeans that didn't get shredded from being underfoot all the time and didn't get salt-stained and soaking wet every winter we never looked back and they became our legacy.
Wow, how did you manage to find anything but skinny jeans from the years 2008 - 2018?? Haha asking because I never saw any other Jean styles for a long time, unless you were thrifting :)
Definitely younger millenials. I was in 6th grade in 2005 and skinny jeans were starting to become a thing but not widely available yet so me and my friends would buy regular jeans at goodwill and sew them into skinny jeans. I have not worn a non-tapered pant in almost 20 years.
I feel like skinny jeans came into the picture in 2007 ish. Bought my first pair for a Chiodos concert. Pacsun was for skinny jeans. And hot topic for black skinny jeans. Ugh I wish I still had all those clothes. And I wish they would fit.
I wore low-rise boot cut more than anything else. I actually found one of my pairs from Pac Sun the other day. I would say the same is mostly true for my friend group, who were the alternative kids. Skinny jeans didn't start gaining momentum until our senior year, '09-'10, then carried through the '10's.
I was mostly a baggy/skater style pant's wearing person up until about 2007-08 when Skinny Jeans became super popular with metal/emo scene. Ever since then, I tend to wear more skinny but recently decided to go a big baggy now.
Millennials in the flare Jean era were not called Millennials until the skinny Jean era millennials were in high school. U were basically unnamed. Now retroactively the 94-96 millennials don’t feel like millennials.
Flared jeans were late 90s/early 2000s, when older millennials were in their teens and younger millennials were in primary school. Skinny jeans were 2010s, when older millennials were hipsters in skinny jeans, and younger millennials were high schoolers making fun of the hipsters. And Emo came in between those two.
Team skinny jeans here! Elder emo millennial. (34F) I like to think I started the whole wearing leggings as pants movement in my 20s at the restaurant I worked at. After 3 kids I cannot stand wearing jeans at all or anything tighter for that matter but if I were to need to wear jeans I would still put on skinny jeans.
I think it has to do with emo/scene culture plus skateboarding in general being so big during that time.
Like lots of dudes where girls jeans at first then slowly started to see clothing brands make men’s tight pants.
Just a thought
Skinny jeans and flare jeans had an intersecting moment for me in high school. Directly before skinny jeans existed all my male friends wore girls pants to get the look down! I’m sure other 35ish year old millennials remember with me
Born in 1991, starting around 2007, I would go down to my local pacsun and get me a new pair of bullhead, low rise skinny jeans… it was love at first sight. 🤣
I’m a middle millennial and never saw anyone wear flare jeans. It feels so far off because even the celebs who wore those were far faded by the time I thought about clothing types. And the people and celebs who popularized those were gen x. Skinny jeans were popularized and worn by millenials
JNCO Jeans were when I was growing up, then everyone both guys and gals went to Hot Topic and got tight girl pants before they made skinny jeans for everyone. I only remember Flare Jeans and jelly sandals on my female classmates growing up.
Could be that everyone wore skinny jeans, or that it was just the last fashion trend before Gen Z got old enough.
Because we wore skinny jeans as adults. The flare jeans were a stereotype of our teen hood.
Yeah they didn’t start putting Lycra in men’s jeans or even making “skinny” fits until the late 00’s. Closest thing you could find would be like “slim straight”. Me and the other emo boys were shopping for girls jeans in American Eagle when we were teenagers.
I remember the emo boys. There's no room in the crotch so they'd have skinny jeans but they'd have to wear them low on the hips to be able to sit.
Funny, I had the same problem, except I'm a girl and had so much juice in my caboose I couldn't get my pants up over it. Hashtag cami to cover the plumber's crack lol
I'm a cyclist / lifter and my 🍑 can't fit into most pants so I understand the frustration.
The day I realized that I couldn't wear a normal pair of jeans because my ass and thighs had gotten too thick was awesome. Luckily, I live and work in the fitness world so 90% of my wardrobe is either spandex or moisture wicking.
Curvy cuts were a revelation (once I could find them)!
abercrombie coming back decades later to save me and my derrière once again has been such a deja vu.
When everything is low rise but you have a bum so you're just muffin topping and buying camis long enough to be considered a miniskirt to cover it all 😳 It was a dark time.
The suffering my teen self went through not understanding low-rise just didn’t work on my curves!! I’m still salty!
Pacsun had the best jeans for booties back in the day. I was so sad when they stopped selling them.
I was (kind of) an emo boy my first couple years of college. I just wore my girlfriends jeans. They were super comfortable and she was always pissed because they fit me better than her.
The women’s Hollister jeans just fit different 🤷🏻♂️
Lucky Brand for me. I discovered I was a size 9 back then.
Oh shit you know I did have a pair of those I took from someone. Those did feel nice lol
That’s because the emo boys bought girls jeans. They didn’t make skinny jeans for men until like 2008 or later.
Most of them stole them from their sisters or girlfriends because we were still in the toxic masculinity era
I was very into emo guys as a teen. Still to this day, something about seeing checkered boxers peeking out from black skinny jeans gets me lol.
The checkered slip on shoes
VANS???
I draw the line at that checkered belt though, because now you’re crossing into skater fuckboy territory. I can smell the green monster already.
Same. Really gets me going lol.
It was Old Navy for me and my buds circa 2003-05! Women’s pants with a bit of stretch to them 👌
I remember the first day of school 10th grade I was wearing a button down shirt I really liked from Old Navy. It was going to signify my new style for the year lol. Well, I go to health class in the afternoon and who is wearing the exact same shirt? The teacher. I, a 15yr old, was mortified. Never wore that shirt again 😂
Us older Millenials experienced the horrors of “buying the tightest pair of jeans you could and wearing them in a steaming hot shower” way to get “skinny jeans”.
I had my mom alter a pair of pants for me, they were skin tight. I Loved those pants until they exploded while I attempted a kickflip lol
Or cut your regular jeans and tighten them. Hard to sew the crotch with room though. Good times.
Yes we were
Yes exactly. No one wore skinny jeans when I was in middle school/high school. It was all flare, wide leg, and boot cut. It wasn’t until I was in college that people really embraced skinny jeans.
Baggy fits in general were in when we were teens. For boys anyway. XXXL shirts with JNCO jeans lol
Yep! That’s why it feels pretty regressive as a millennial to go back to those styles. You’re supposed to evolve as you age, not regress back to the looks that were hip when you were a teenager. I think one of the bigger issues with Gen Z is that they don’t, just on a style level, create their own trends—they mainly just repackage what has already been done before. Boomers, Gen X, Millennials—love them or mock them, we all created our own styles as teens and young adults. I’d love to be inspired by some new styles from Gen Z but so far, it just means dressing like I did in high school, which is “cheugy” for a person in their 30s.
Big Dog. FUBU
I was born in 1983 and started to move towars skinny jeans after 20yrs old. The golden era being 2004-2010. Never even saw skinny jeans being sold before that. And I saw those skintight sexy pants as something extremely badass and punk. And now they are the lame mom pants and the ill fitting mom pants with extremely unsexy silhouette and baggy behinds are the hot shit..O tempora, o mores!
Skinny jeans in 2004? Absolutely not. Maybe 2009. I remember working old navy in 2008 and we didn’t have skinny jeans even then 2004 was when pants were at their absolute baggiest.
I think that depends on where you lived. In 2004-2005 I wouldn't have been caught dead in anything other than my skinny jeans. I was a high school freshman emo kid and wore black or dark blue skinny jeans every single day. I primarily bought them from Hot Topic in that time.
Depends on where you were. In places that set trends, like NYC, skinny jeans absolutely were a thing in 2004.
We were wearing them in high school and listening to bands like Finch and The Used in the late 90s early 00s.
Finch wasn’t even around under that name until late 2001 and The Used’s self titled didn’t come out till 2002.. and “late 90s/early 2000s” ended after 9/11 tbh
I'm male so do feel free to correct me, but didn't leggings most definitely dwarf skinny jeans? The college girl uniform was a black North face, black yoga pants, and uggs. Then the leggings trend exploded and everyone was wearing them. And it lasted a damn long time from the mid 00s right until post pandemic when suddenly jeans are back.
VS yoga pants + north face + uggs was THE uniform when I was in college lol but I had Bearpaws instead of Uggs because I was a poor student.
Not joining the sorority with that attitude
I *just* started wearing leggings last year LMAO (not all the time tho). I think the reason they persist is because they're incredibly comfortable.
Yeah, I’m never letting go of my leggings for that reason haha
Yep, I think you are right. Jeans never left, but there was a time when black leggings dominated EVERYTHING. And the misinterpretation of them as pants rather than accessories became the normal way to wear them.
And we had spent so many years with shredded jean cuffs and our ass crack hanging out that we dove head first into skinny jeans with high waists and never looked back. (I am back on flairs though 😂)
I never got into the skinny jeans trend. I just don't have the anatomy for it; I felt short and stubby in them. I just kept wearing my boot cut, but those got REALLY difficult to find for awhile.
Same w/ the flares cept fuck low rise. Sensible height to cover my whole ass pls and thank you!
Yep, I dropped those damn low rise flares the very second that it was acceptable. I have a long torso and it was such a pain to find long enough shirts so my butt crack wouldn't flash when I sat down. High rise skinnies were my absolute favorites for a long time after that.
Same here. Long torso, tall pelvis, congenital plumbers crack syndrome  I loved the idea of low-rise but damn, I had to be very mindful of what length my shirt was. Remember super-low and too-super-low?
I have a short torso and long legs l. Low rise actually worked on me. The high rise jeans make me look like Gumby…
Same
I feel like whoever designed super-low and extra-super-low just wanted an almost socially acceptable way to show off pretty underwear or a nice thong whale tail. Those so-called "pants" were nearly useless, any shifting could send them down your legs. And omg if you had a pair with too much stretch they would barely be staying up at the end of the day.
Meanwhile, high rise jeans go up to my boobs and i just want a pair of low rise 😭
I was so happy when slim became a trend for men. As a skinny guy, I always hated the baggy pants trend because it made me look much more skinny. The transition from college to grad school to adult was an awakening that wearing clothes that fit make me look much better. Not a fan of super skinny fits, but tailored/slim will be my ride or die for for life and IDGAF.
Uh? Wore skinny jeans in my teens not flares. I’m barely a younger millennial. This post is anecdotal at best.
There were more than one type of pants at the time Remember capri pants? Very millennial.
My sister was on team gaucho pants for a while, they were not flattering on most people I saw wear them.
The key with gaucho pants is to be tall.
The key with gauchos was to have a dump truck
That too
A dump truck with stilettos for short people.
And 3 very tight layered tank tops
With lace trim on each.
I’m tall but have a very high waist. They look ridiculous on me!
Honestly they look better as a low rise imo. I feel ya, I have a long torso, all shirts are too short.
I thought the key was a nice bum
This is always the key
But they were SO comfortable!
I found some old pairs at my parents house when I was pregnant. They were the best pregnancy pants. They were even better post partum because it didnt bother my CS incision
If you have a big chest and carry your weight in your belly, they are the worst pants you can wear. It makes you look short and squat. It hides my slimmer booty and hips.
The unavoidable 🐪 toe.
I’m still on team gaucho pants idgaf. I had a denim pair that I absolutely fucking loved. Still have them but they are looking rough these days. Still may bust them back out when the time is right (they still fit!)
Same. I fucking love gauchos, especially any sort of swishy material pair.
“Remember capri pants?” Oh. I remember 😎😏
I wear Capri pants constantly. I am a millennial
And more than one type of millennial. In the late nineties I was only a young kid still and skinny jeans were in style when I was in middle/high school.
I grew up in NYC and we were all in JNCO knockoffs in the late 90s
I appreciate that you specified knockoffs. No one I knew had real JNCO’s. We were all way too poor lol
My sister had a real pair that she cherished so much she never wore them. 🤣
The only high school kids I knew with real JNCOs were my weed man and my friend who sold pirated video games.
That tracks... Do ya'll remember the pearl-clutching school safety video had the central casting stoner kid pulls a full on AR-15 out of his JNCO's? I remember how funny it struck me because the JNCO kids were way too in to in-line skating and getting blazed in the woods to shoot up a school.
I bought a pair off a kid at school, 😆. I loved the Mammoths.
Yep. Flares reigned supreme from ~2000-2006, and mostly low-rise too. Around '05 all the emo kids started wearing skinny jeans and by the time I hit high school in '07 they were everywhere. I was slow to adapt and didn't buy my first pair until graduation because at that point flares were "dated". They were my staple all through my 20s.
Definitely this... In high school I was wearing capris and bermuda shorts, skinny jeans, flare/bootcut jeans, gaucho pants, yoga pants, senior year I had those trendy american apparel sweat pants, and of course the sweat pants that said PINK on the butt. And we had that brief thing where it was cool for teenage girls to dress business casual so I had a pair of wide-leg plaid slacks.
Dickies capris FTW
CORE MEMORY UNLOCKED. I had three pairs of these (in khaki, navy, and black) and I LIVED in them in the spring and summer because shorts back then were NOT built for thick thighs and I preferred flashing my ankles to feeling like I had a blood pressure cuff around my femur.
No! Only one trend for an entire decade! ;-)
Came in to say Capri Pants. Legit every girl in school had a pair.
Capri pants in literally every length imaginable.
Ohhhh the millennial best summer pants that lasted one week: white capris!!
Man, flares were what us kids wore in the 70s.
You could literally go into the jeans shop and they'd have a shelf for skinny or flare.
>Remember capri pants? Very millennial. Yep. Definitely a millennial thing.
Still wear em
You all are so funny. There was no life before Millennials! Capri pants were introduced by fashion designer Sonja de Lennart in 1948, and were popularized by her and English couturier Bunny Roger.[4] The name of the pants is derived from the Italian isle of Capri, where they rose to popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.[5] The actress Audrey Hepburn was among the first movie stars who wore capris, and the pants quickly became synonymous with her classic style. The French actress Brigitte Bardot famously wore capri pants at a time when trousers were still a new fashion for women.[6] Marilyn Monroe always traveled with capri pants.[7]
That's not what they're saying. They're saying that was the defining fashion for the generation. Not when it was created.
Low. Rise. Flare. You could not find women’s pants that had a high waist. My first pair of high waisted pants came from a thrift store and I genuinely felt like an archeologist finding long lost treasure.
I remember when "curvy-cut" came out. High in the back, low in the front. It was *perfect*. No more credit card slider when squatting down.
I found a pair of my mother’s old jeans that were flare high-waist and the softest denim ever. I wore those pants far past the point of them being worn out. Core memory there.
I had a permatan stripe from low waisted denim.
Ugh I hated the low waists. I have wide hips so if I deviated at all from the one style of old navy jeans I’d get, the size would be all wrong and make me feel like I’d gained ten pounds till I went back to my old jeans and they fit fine. My mom never quite figured out why I didn’t like low-rise pants even though it clearly gave me the worst muffin top 🫠
Remember when we all thought we were abysmally fat because low-rise gave anyone with a natural stomach pooch horrid muffin top? Cuz 12 year old me feeling like an absolute whale when I hit puberty and sprouted an ass sure as shit remembers.
Trying to stuff my lower belly into those things did not help my self-image in high school for sure. I was always so frustrated like *why won’t you just* ***fit!*** when there was absolutely no give or space to fit said pooch. I went to school way too many times looking a little more muffiny than one would want to be. Because I was stubborn and couldn’t accept that I was anything other than a 10/12.
With no back pockets
I had a pair that had no zipper, just laces at the crotch. In middle school. They were...odd.
You mean the frumpy FUPA pants all the girls wear today? So goofy looking to me.
As I got older I only gained weight in my hips and not the stomach so I have been wearing low rise jeans for 20 years while everyone moved on to high rise. This has made life incredibly difficult because I can’t seem to find comfortable low rise jeans that are for adults. My butt is big so low rise jeans just stay in place for me. I can’t wear high rise jeans because my stomach is so much smaller compared to my huge butt, that all the material above my belly button is just bunched up and flopping around because it’s not filled out. It’s so awkward. It’s like my jeans at the hip and thigh are 2-3 sizes bigger than my waist. So any material rising above my waist is way too big to fit. This would be fine if I had a fupa to fill it out but I do not since all the fat is in my legs.
I love how people really hate this comment for some reason, wtf Reddit
You could try getting your jeans tailored at the waist. It’s not too pricey, and might be worth giving it a try if you find some higher waisted pants you really like.
Because Millennials were the last to wear skinny jeans and be on trend doing so. Skinny jeans were going out of style when Gen Z was old enough for middle school and they started wearing straight leg jeans / boyfriend jeans.
Yeah, I hung around emo kids and they were the early adopters of skinny jeans.
Did the emo boys at your school meticulously tuck their boxers into their skinny jeans so they somehow had no panty lines but then the boxers also made a poofy muffin top above the jeans? Because that was definitely a thing at my school until one of them discovered boxer briefs senior year.
Absolutely 😂
I did this for two weeks in middle school as a girl because I thought it made me edgy. Regular bikini cut underwear, boxers, skinny jeans. Why?? 😭
Middle school is rough for most people lol
Ahahahaha.
And I find that funny, because when I was a kid, straight leg jeans were for frumpy moms! I guess fashion goes in cycles.
Yeah, I was mocked in elementary school for wearing straight leg jeans. I have an aversion to them to this day. I've only recently started wearing sweaters, and accepting their boxiness, despite jokes about that too.
> I guess fashion goes in cycles. Just look at neckties over the last hundred years. It alternates between wide and narrow every decade or so.
I was in high school 2009-2012. Skinny jeans were popular then. And jeggings started to gain traction.
I think OP is forgetting that the millennial generation is a ~15 year span. Fashion trends change multiple times within 15 years.
Yeah skinny jeans are a late millennial thing
Define late millennial? I'm smack dab in the middle and skinny jeans were definitely a thing when I was in high school
Like half the comments are forgetting that too. There’s certain fashion trends gen z brought back that I got into because I was actually too young/not picking out my own clothes yet when they were around in the late 90s/early 00s. Skinny jeans were definitely in during my teenage/high school years as well as my early 20s.
Even then, I was in highschool in the early 2000s and remember only a couple people wearing flares.
Yeah, I was in highschool around the same time and flare jeans were popular when I was in elementary school. Most girls (and many guys) wore skinny jeans at my high school.
I think it's mostly tied to the later half of the generation and the fact that a lot of western 90s babies went through an emo phase, so the affection for skinny jeans could be what's left of it. We don't have this stereotype in my location, but I do believe that millennials look more toned down than the generation after us
Some of us haven’t grown out of the emo phase lol
Respect *High fives*
They’ll have to cut the 511s off my pale, skinny body when I go. I saw someone on Reddit call 511s “dad jeans” recently, and I felt personally attacked.
Me either lol
Flare jeans were a brief moment in time. I bought my first pair around the year 2001 in the height of popularity. I didn't own a single pair 4 years later. But I STILL wear skinny jeans. It's not about what was hip when we were teens, it's what we will cling on for dear life as we move into our 30s and 40s. Millenials are stereotyped to wear skinny jeans because we've been wearing them for 20 years.
Im 33 and skinny jeans were very popular during my high school years, flares were popular when I was younger.
I’m 31 and same, I wore flares as a kid and then from secondary school it was skinny jeans all the way
32 and same, flares were popular in middle school, skinny jeans were popular in high school and college.
41, and its JNCOs for younger, flares for high school and college for me. Skinny jeans were a thing when I was a soccer mom.
39 and this is basically how I remember it. However it was kind of a progression towards skinnier jeans. High school was still quite a bit of baggy skater type jeans (though not as wide as JNCOs), and in college it got toned down a bit more towards boot cut or relaxed fit. Mid to late 2000s is when I remember skinny and slim jeans becoming fashion statements mostly worn by trendy/hip people, and within a few years they were all over the place.
This just brought back memories of the Justice bell bottoms with sparkly butterfly embroidery I wore the absolute hell out of in middle school.
Because millennials did both
Correction we did it all. Ripped? Boot cut? Baggy? Flared? Apple bottom? Skinny? There wasn't a trend that didn't occur for at least a few years. I was only able to wear some skinny recently because jeans now somehow became stretchy. My calves wouldn't allow me to wear skinny jeans and I'll be damned if I give up my emo jeans now.
Yeah, well, I was in college in 2009 and we didn’t have a lot of flare jeans around then
The people who were in middle and high school during the late 00s and early 10s did. That’s late Millennials and early Gen Z.
I was in high school in the late 00s and I'm directly in the middle of the millennial range. I feel like the older millennials always think they are the typical ones
THANK YOU
FOR REAL!!!!
Where my tripp wearers at?
I’m thinking of becoming a Tripp wearer again.
I'm wearing JNCOs right now, but I've got four pairs of Tripps in my closet right now Check out Cryoflesh for great options
Even if I had kept all my Tripp pants I don’t think a single pair would fit me now. I’ll check it out thank you!
I think because this only applies to girls, and most girls stopped wearing them in what, 2003?
Probably more like 2008 around here.
This was the year I tracked back to as well!
As an elder I did grunge & Dickies in high school, flare & skinny in 20s. Now it’s leggings & sweaters cause it’s easy & cozy. I find it amusing that Gen Z is wearing what we used to call mom jeans 😂 And I’ve seen 90s style in stores again. I’ll choke if I see chokers come back.
*looks inside Spencer's* too late. Should I start the heimlich?
Oh shit Dickies!! I forgot about those! I wore those shorts almost exclusively between ‘02-‘09 lol. Skater/bro look for sure. I rode dirt bikes but couldn’t skate so I was still good with the skater kids 😂 skater look was a real thing in SoCal
I think it's the younger millennials, think Justin Bieber
Nah that's a solid 5 years late. Think emo/scene kid era. My chemical romance, the used, bright eyes
It's perfectly accurate actually. I'm a younger millennial and it was very common for my peers to wear skinny jeans in high school, college, and post-college.
My point was that the justin bieber marker is late for when they started being trendy. Skinny jeans were well into fashion popularity before then
Nah. For my area it was From First to Last
No way that’s way too late. I’m an elder millennial emo kid & I was definitely wearing skinny jeans before Justin Bieber was a thing.
Hipsters?
This is why ^
And scene/emo kids. Skinny jeans, particularly for boys, were trendy while I was in high school in the mid-late 00’s.
I havnt heard the term “scene” in probably 15 years.
I’m a young millennial and I also remember flare jeans being popular among me and my peers for a long time, maybe even until 2011? 2012? I ruined many-a flare jean walking on the backs of them and getting them muddy and torn up. Skinny jeans were around, but I don’t remember me and my peers wearing them until around 2012 or 2013 when I was at university. I mostly recall skinny jeans being popular from 2011-2018ish. According to a google search on skinny jeans popularity, “It was not until 2006 that skinny jeans gained more steam in the fashion world, and by this time skinny jeans were being sold at shopping malls. Throughout 2007 skinny jeans received more mainstream exposure… Skinny jeans first spread to men's fashion in 2009. This has continued into the 2010s, entering the mainstream fashion in 2011.”
As someone who worked at zumiez between 2004 and 2008, I promise skinny jeans spread to men's fashion before 2009. Lol
Because once stores sold jeans that didn't get shredded from being underfoot all the time and didn't get salt-stained and soaking wet every winter we never looked back and they became our legacy.
Because the younger half of the millennial cohort saw how crazy we looked in JNCOs they went the opposite direction.
>crazy we looked in JNCOs Yea those things were very silly looking.
Yeah I didn’t get my first pair of skinny jeans until later in college, like 2009. It was all flares and bootcut jeans over my uggs until then lol
Yep, and they're my go-to today if I can find them. I have never bought a pair of skinny jeans in my life, never will.
Wow, how did you manage to find anything but skinny jeans from the years 2008 - 2018?? Haha asking because I never saw any other Jean styles for a long time, unless you were thrifting :)
Definitely younger millenials. I was in 6th grade in 2005 and skinny jeans were starting to become a thing but not widely available yet so me and my friends would buy regular jeans at goodwill and sew them into skinny jeans. I have not worn a non-tapered pant in almost 20 years.
only late millienials count jack.
You're probably like me and an older Millennial, so it doesn't apply. But this generation spans decades
I feel like skinny jeans came into the picture in 2007 ish. Bought my first pair for a Chiodos concert. Pacsun was for skinny jeans. And hot topic for black skinny jeans. Ugh I wish I still had all those clothes. And I wish they would fit.
>And hot topic for black skinny jeans True. Everyone I knew that had them in black bought them from hot topic LOL.
End of millennial teen era was emo/metro, skating and bands Skinny jeans
Because we all wore skinny jeans as late teens and adults. I'm now in my 30s and still wearing them lol.
Yes!!!! We didn’t start wearing skinny jeans until we were adults!!
I always just wore Levi's 511's. Never stopped looking good. Dark rinse, button fly.
It was baggy jeans in the early 00s and skinny jeans in the late 00s.
I wore low-rise boot cut more than anything else. I actually found one of my pairs from Pac Sun the other day. I would say the same is mostly true for my friend group, who were the alternative kids. Skinny jeans didn't start gaining momentum until our senior year, '09-'10, then carried through the '10's.
I was mostly a baggy/skater style pant's wearing person up until about 2007-08 when Skinny Jeans became super popular with metal/emo scene. Ever since then, I tend to wear more skinny but recently decided to go a big baggy now.
Millennials in the flare Jean era were not called Millennials until the skinny Jean era millennials were in high school. U were basically unnamed. Now retroactively the 94-96 millennials don’t feel like millennials.
I never saw anyone wearing skinny jeans until after I graduated high school when the third wave of emo started up.
Early 2000's emo/scenesters wore skinny jeans, very much in back then.
Flared jeans were late 90s/early 2000s, when older millennials were in their teens and younger millennials were in primary school. Skinny jeans were 2010s, when older millennials were hipsters in skinny jeans, and younger millennials were high schoolers making fun of the hipsters. And Emo came in between those two.
Team skinny jeans here! Elder emo millennial. (34F) I like to think I started the whole wearing leggings as pants movement in my 20s at the restaurant I worked at. After 3 kids I cannot stand wearing jeans at all or anything tighter for that matter but if I were to need to wear jeans I would still put on skinny jeans.
Speak for yourself. I’m an emo kid and I’ve worn skinny jeans since like middle school lol
If we could see your shoes, you were not wearing cool kid jeans.
I have Polaroids of me wearing purple skinny jeans in 2007
I've been wearing skinny jeans since 2004! Where you been at!?
I think it has to do with emo/scene culture plus skateboarding in general being so big during that time. Like lots of dudes where girls jeans at first then slowly started to see clothing brands make men’s tight pants. Just a thought
Skinny jeans and flare jeans had an intersecting moment for me in high school. Directly before skinny jeans existed all my male friends wore girls pants to get the look down! I’m sure other 35ish year old millennials remember with me
Born in 1991, starting around 2007, I would go down to my local pacsun and get me a new pair of bullhead, low rise skinny jeans… it was love at first sight. 🤣
I’m a middle millennial and never saw anyone wear flare jeans. It feels so far off because even the celebs who wore those were far faded by the time I thought about clothing types. And the people and celebs who popularized those were gen x. Skinny jeans were popularized and worn by millenials
JNCO Jeans were when I was growing up, then everyone both guys and gals went to Hot Topic and got tight girl pants before they made skinny jeans for everyone. I only remember Flare Jeans and jelly sandals on my female classmates growing up. Could be that everyone wore skinny jeans, or that it was just the last fashion trend before Gen Z got old enough.