Once you start seeing skinny jeans, it's pretty hard to stop. And the more you see of them, the clearer this becomes: the jeans might be narrow, but it's a broad church living in them. Sloanes like them high-waisted, apparently having ironed the legs; emos wear them flatfooted and belted. Hipsters roll the ankles and prefer an imprecise crotch; skaters like them with sneakers and a snapback. You can play this game on almost any street in Britain. If there are people, there will be skinny jeans. They are as much a part of street furniture as lampposts – but narrower.
Shepherdson thinks the punk connection "might explain why skinny jeans are so appealing to the British", but that doesn't really nail their origins this time around. She has a theory that Alexander McQueen's bumsters, first shown in 1996, got us thinking about more interesting trouser shapes, and that an appetite for something different seeped into our consciousness alongside a fatigue with leggings, creating the perfect conditions for skinny jeans to flourish.
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