Dear Insta Baddies, Stop Trying To Make Low-Rise Jeans Happen

This is a request that I'm flagging with high importance.

 

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Low-rise jeans have been the topic of great debate for the past few years. Before the pandemic there were whispers that they could return, leaving us with night terrors of our old Y2K camera reel, featuring some dodgy bell bottoms and even more dodgy side fringes. But then the global pandemic arrived, and nothing besides clean tracksuit pants were important for the following two years.

Cue modern day. The year is now 2022 and the pandemic is easing. Everything is beginning to return, including the chatter surrounding low-rise bloody jeans. Except it’s no longer whispers we’re hearing re: the noughties style coming back into fashion, it’s loud and unavoidable megaphone announcements. Ones that scream “HA, Gen-Z’s are coming for you, babe, hold onto your high-waisted pants while you can.”

On Depop at the moment, the hottest type of clothing is vintage Y2K. We’re talking low waisted trousers of all types from cargo to denim, satin corsets, retro slogan tank tops, halter necks, and tiny baguette bags.

The likes of Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner and Kaia Gerber walked, and the Insta-baddies are running, all the way back to the year 2000.

I mean, I’m not complaining about it *all*. I actually think Y2K was quite a vibe. Groovy Chick reigned supreme in my bedroom, Juicy Couture is where all my confirmation money went and Uggs were my main choice of footwear. All things which I happily welcomed back into fashion again last year. But low-rise jeans, I can never. As someone with more of a long-torso-and-short-legs-physique, high-waisted jeans did me a solid in 2010. Photos of me before then were banished from the Earth.

As the more flattering option for a multitude of sizes, when high rise jeans arrived they put emphasis on gorgeous curves, hips and bums, making people not only feel more sexy and secure, but safe that they weren’t at risk of exposing their ass crack when they ever-so-slighty bent over. The fear.

 

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For those of us who remember Y2K fashion trends, a lot of the reason why we don’t want to see many of them back is because of the emphasis they put on being thin. Headlines of models in low-rise jeans would fixate on their “washboard abs” and “slender physique” making anyone of literally any other body type feel pretty shite when they were told they had a “muffin top” if they tried to copy the trend without fitting the criteria.

When I recently popped into Urban Outfitters, I picked up two pairs of pants to bring to the changing room, realising soon after that they were both low-rise when they reached my thighs. Cue cold sweats. A skim around the aisles once more after I had left the dressing room and it became clear that the style was beginning to dominate the floor once again.

 

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And look, there’s clearly a demand. Shops wouldn’t be bringing them back if there wasn’t a hunt for them, and if you’re reading this and you love them, then by all means GIRL, YOU ROCK THEM. It’s just for those of us who have once said RIP to this style, it’s hard to see it return with such vengeance.

What can we hope for? Well, a greater variety of low-rise styles, more representation of different body types modelling them and a greater availability of sizes, which I mean, shouldn’t be hard as they’re all things that the fashion industry has *thankfully* improved on since 2000.

The question is, will you wear them? I’d rather not.