Big pants are driving big changes across the entire wardrobe.
A shift in fashion toward wide-leg jeans has driven the likes of Gap Inc., J Crew Group’s Madewell and even Lululemon Athletica Inc. to offer these styles, boosting sales. Now the brands are enjoying an extra benefit that comes with the popularity of the new silhouette: Consumers are buying a host of other items to go with the pants.
While bigger tops worked with skinny jeans, shoppers are now gravitating to smaller ones to balance out the wider bottoms. The phenomenon is driving more purchases at brands like Madewell, Gap and Urban Outfitters Inc.’s Anthropologie.
And its potential to significantly shake up spending in teens and young women is making companies and analysts carefully track the wide-leg jean craze — and the additional shopping that it inspires. It’s yet another factor that’s contributing to a revival among consumer apparel retailers like Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch Co., shares of which have more than doubled over the past year.
Isabelle Hasslund, 24, is one buyer who exemplifies the dynamic. Over the past 12 months, after spending more than $100 on wide-leg jeans, she has shelled out even more — $700 — on items to pair with them. Her haul includes multiple “baby tees” and cropped-tee shirts, including a $48 top from Kim Kardashian’s Skims.
“Wow, I’m like, this is a lot of money. What was I thinking?” the native New Yorker said. “But also I wear ‘em all the time, so it’s not.”
Apart from helping sales of new clothing styles, wide-legged silhouettes also create a “potentially new driver for footwear fashion trends,” said Adrienne Yih, a managing director at Barclays Plc, pointing to a shift from “athletic performance” to a “fashion, flat bottom casual shoe.”
Hasslund’s shopping spree included $163 Dolce Vita kitten heels and $223 Vince Camuto boots, which she bought as more fashionable alternatives to sneakers after switching to wide-leg jeans.
“It’s so cute. It’s pointed, delicate,” she said, referring to the kitten heels. “I wear that with my jeans pretty frequently when I need to dress up or honestly when I just want to feel good about myself.”
As for the boots, they “give the pants a little more structure on the bottom when I wear them,” she said, adding “Whenever I need to dress up, I wear either the kitten heels or when it’s, like, cooler, these boots.”
For many women, skinny jeans had become such a wardrobe staple that the shifting styles prompted a low-key identity crisis. “I went to Europe last fall, and I did not pack skinny jeans and I was like, ‘who am I,’” joked Kimi Smith, a meteorologist and fashion blogger living in Boise, Idaho.
Smith said at one point in her life she thought her skinny jeans would have to be peeled off her “dead body.” When she swapped out her collection for a wider leg, she had to buy a full wardrobe to go with them. Now, Smith’s closet is full of shorter tops, cropped ribbed tank tops and calf-hugging boots and other shoes that work with wide-leg pants.
“Anything that I buy now has to work with wide-leg jeans,” she said.
At Madewell, customers typically purchase one additional item when they buy denim, according to Anne Crisafulli, its chief merchandising officer. Among options the brand offers are a $138 wide-leg denim, a $88 button-up top and a $110 ballet flat.
Crisafulli said customers were coming to stores specifically to buy wide-leg jeans but then were at a loss of how to style them, peppering employees with questions on which sweaters or shoes may pair best. So the company shifted its strategy to offer more of what it calls ‘style education’ to help shoppers navigate the new look.
Gap’s namesake brand said its average order size increases when shoppers buy baggy jeans compared to when they purchase skinny or other denim silhouettes. At Levi Strauss & Co., some t-shirts have gotten shorter to work with the wider cut jeans.
At Citizens of Humanity, sales of one of its most popular jeans — a wide-legged style called Ayla — are up 300% from last year. The Isabel Tank — a high-necked ribbed tank top that pairs well with a wider cut — has been selling more too, growing 25 percent in 2024.
The tops, and other smaller ribbed shirts, are a “natural outfit pairing with a wide leg jean,” said Lisa Yu, the Los Angeles brand’s design director. “If you’re wearing something big on the bottom, you want to see some sort of shape on top,” she said.
By Lily Meier and Julia Fanzeres