Barrel-leg jeans? Your legs deserve better

Remember in 2013 how everyone was making videos of themselves doing the Harlem Shake on YouTube? And how, for the first 15 or so videos, it was delightful, and then the whole thing was co-opted by soft drink companies and elite university lacrosse teams? After that, the trend was declared dead, and we all woke up as though from some collective fever dream and decided to get lobs and write “bye Felicia” on the internet instead.

This has happened for all of human history, right? Someone or something does or wears something that feels novel (or at least hasn’t been done for a while) and suddenly every man and his dog are wearing Lululemon (2011), drinking bullet coffee (2014) or filming themselves accusing Taylor Swift of being a secret nazi (right now).

Barrel-leg jeans are the trend example that has been getting to me lately. If I lost you at “barrel-leg”, then you are one of the fortunate few who have not walked the streets of Marrickville or Fitzroy. Rest assured, you will know them when you see them. They are the pants that look, for the first few inches below the waistband, unremarkable, only to then deviate aggressively away from the leg, never to return. They are like culottes but with additional rigidity, and they have no justification for existing.

I should declare at this point that I tried on a pair recently, found myself depressed, formulating a series of scathing criticisms that I put in an imaginary letter to the Boss Of Jeans, and that I have now reproduced in this column. I felt upset that I was fleetingly sucked in by a trend that I know to be a) objectively ugly, b) just a trick by Fashion Deep State to make me buy new things and c) something that I should have been too old to have fallen for again, having already been rejected by these pants in 1998.

Barrel-leg jeans are grotesque. They distort the body – not in an interesting way, but in a way that is suggestive of a vitamin deficiency. They are the type of ugly that fashion people wear when they say things like “I’m not trying for pretty” and “it’s a unique silhouette”. In fashion, ugliness is sometimes the point, and people should wear what makes them feel good, but when something is being promoted to the public as aspirational, it should also be genuinely accessible to those expected to partake.

The shame of getting sucked in again, of falling for the trick of a trend that I know will fade, is humiliating.

The barrel-leg cut comes with a degree of difficulty that far exceeds what a mere layperson should attempt. In the early noughties, hipster jeans forced women to choose between sustaining their bodies and wearing pants. This trend exists in some alternate reality where we do not go to the supermarket, sit at a desk or collect children from school but rather stand, at a strained angle for the entire day so that our new extra wide legs can be positioned correctly. These jeans are just fashion elitism at work.

In an iconic scene in The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly explains to Anne Hathaway’s Andy with snarling contempt that choice in clothing is but an illusion, that every item selected, regardless of when and how, exists within the single fashion ecosystem and is a result of elite designs slowly trickling down to the plebs in the discount stores. Barrel-leg jeans are an example of that, of a decision being made higher up the chain that it is time for a new jeans shape and the result making its way down to those of us at the bottom, a fait accompli.

Another thing about barrel-legs: they are not even really new. We have done this before, with flannelette shirts and thick black belts and Doc Martens. Women of my generation have lived through the “never again” autopsy of the ’90s already. Fashion designers are relying both on the Gen Zs coming through now (jokes on them! Gen Zs don’t have any money!) and on our collective amnesia to sell pants. The shame of getting sucked in again, of falling for the trick of a trend that I know will fade, is humiliating.

Of course, I know that this too shall pass, that fashion was and forever will be as fleeting as a Trump scandal and that by this time next year it will be people wearing onions on their belts while accusing Mark Zuckerberg of being a body double. But still, dear reader, I urge you not to succumb to the barrel-leg. Let us wait on the sidelines as it moves from trend to passé. Instead, let’s jump onto the next big thing, which – judging from Bella Hadid and Gabbriette – will be kitten-heeled thong sandals and dirty wash jeans.

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