Congratulations, Hailey Bieber, you did it. The street style star influenced me—a devout wide-leg jeans wearer—to surrender to the slim-but-not-entirely-skinny cigarette jeans trend. Even so, wearing luxury flip-flops in winter—the phenomenon she styled with her cigarette jeans on February 3—will take some more convincing.
Allow me to set the scene: While Bieber's brand, Rhode, hosted a launch party in Big Sky, Montana, Bieber and Zoë Kravitz scored a reservation at Sushi Park in West Hollywood. (The It girls rarely reunite anywhere else.) Bieber helped her friend evade the paparazzi by posing in styles straight out of the '90s. First, she stacked a cropped white T-shirt over a black, equally-cropped leather jacket, its collar and cuffs winterized with short shearling fur. For the first time since November, The Row's four-figure Cecily Bag returned to Bieber's arm.
The mogul's once-signature, dark-wash Gap jeans earned the evening off in favor of a mid-wash, cigarette-thin pair. To quote Marie Claire's fashion features editor, Emma Childs, they're "characterized by their slender silhouette and straight cut from knee to ankle, resembling the cylinder they’re named after." Each fringe-free hem was as clean as it was slim, promising her unseasonal flip-flops a proper close-up.
As last summer's most staunch flip-flops supporter, Bieber's shoe rack is stocked with thongs from The Row, Toteme, Prada, Alaïa, and more. This time, she emerged from her closet wearing the flip-flops that started it all: Toteme's $560 thongs-turned-kitten heels.
At first glance, you might confuse their black leather exterior for The Row's City Flip-Flops, another Bieber-core staple of yestersummer. But don't miss the squared toe box, a.k.a. a defining feature of the Toteme thongs, alongside a 1.5" kitten heel.
Winter weather forced L.A. cool-girl Bieber to embark on a four-month-long flip-flops hiatus in late Oct. 2025. Her last public, flip-flop-clad outfit included a vintage Christian Dior crewneck and the aforementioned Gap jeans. Since then, they've traded places with thong-adjacent silhouettes, including Aquazzura and Saint Laurent mules, a The Row-led slipper trend, and even chunky clogs.
The Rhode founder's jeans, on the other hand, have significantly decreased in leg width during her flip-flop pause. She celebrated her late November birthday in Levi's $100 Ribcage Straight Ankle Jeans, made for cigarette-coded "leg-lengthening." By mid-December, her vintage Levi 501s mirrored the same nostalgic charm.
It seems Bieber's Gap jeans have officially retired from her regular rotation (I haven't spotted them since that fateful day in Oct. 2025). Instead, Bieber's standing firmly in her cigarette denim stance, which makes two of us. I'll leave flip-flops in February to her.
