A Brief History of Low-Rise Jeans

Is the Noughties favourite trend actually making a comeback?

Posted on

16 January 2021

All Credits: PA

The Noughties were over a decade ago, but many of the fashion crimes committed are still fresh in our minds.

One of the worst trends to come out of the era were low-rise jeans – trousers slung so low around your waist you were in danger of showing off a bit too much… Despite its perils, we were all wearing them. Since then, they’ve fallen out of fashion, with denim styles now erring towards extremely high waists.

However, in recent months, models like Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski have quietly been wearing low-risers, and now Gucci has sent low-slung denim down the catwalk.

As bum-skimming jeans threaten to make a fashion comeback, let’s take a look at how they first became popular…

The Nineties

A pair of Alexander McQueen’s bumster trousers

In the early Nineties, Alexander McQueen – the enfant terrible of the fashion world – shocked everyone with a new style of trouser. Called ‘bumsters’, the aggressively low-rise trousers were designed to show off the top of the wearer’s bum.

They sparked a new denim trend. Although few styles got so low or showed quite as much, waistlines slowly began creeping down. It was a look very much in line with the problematic ‘heroin chic’ style of the decade, as it saw models showing off their protruding hip bones.

Kate Moss practically championed low-risers, wearing a pair for her 1993 cover of The Face, and modelling them in Calvin Klein commercials with Mark Wahlberg. For men, it was less about low-rise jeans and more about trousers they pulled down below the top of their boxers.

The Noughties

Britney Spears overlays her low-risers with some sparkly material in 2002

In the Noughties, low-rise jeans were everywhere. No longer were they just for waifish models – it was basically the only type of denim you could buy.

The style tended towards low-slung waists, and flared or bootcut legs, plus a bit of extra detailing or bejewelling if you were feeling particularly sassy.

Destiny’s Child show off all the belts you could wear with your jeans in 2001

We have stars like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Paris Hilton and Keira Knightley to thank for taking the trend mainstream.

Without low-rise jeans, how else would you show off your belly button piercing and hip tattoo?

To make your denim extra Noughties, you likely would’ve worn a scarf or something sparkly and dangly as a belt, and no look was complete without your belly button piercing on show.

Now

View this post on Instagram
- The official hashtag #RaveLikeYouAreFive might have suggested something headonistic, cray for the sake of cray. Instead the Gucci “baby man” slouched about in smocking, Liberty prints and nan knits. Everything was deliberately cropped, shrunken - as if to symbolise the outgrowing of one’s past. Accompanying @alessandro_michele ‘s deliberate exercise of nostalgia driven childsplay was a pertinent message in the press notes - “It’s time to celebrate a man who is free to practise self-determination without social constraints, without authoritarian sanctions, without suffocating stereotypes.” - This missive - obvious as it might seem to most people, has been distributed as flyers around universities and schools in Milan. Preaching to the converted perhaps, but as we enter into the thick of Weinstein’s trial, reminding everyone of the full spectrum of toxic masculinity still feels like a worthwhile task

A post shared by Susie Lau (@susiebubble) on Jan 14, 2020 at 4:57am PST

The 2010s saw something of an extreme reaction to the popularity of low-rise jeans. Denim trends went in the complete opposite direction, with waistlines climbing higher and higher – a look still popular now.

But are things set to change? Gucci seems keen to convince us low-rise jeans are back – they appeared as part of designer Alessandro Michele’s fifth anniversary collection with the brand.

While the Gucci low-risers aren’t a total a surprise (Hadid and Ratajkowski, after all, had given us a heads-up that the look might be making a comeback), but will we really all be rushing out to buy low-risers again? We’ll have to see…