What do you think of when you hear the word flares? The counterculture of the late 1960s? Pictures of your parents in the 1970s, perhaps. For me, it’s the Wrangler bell-bottoms I bought secondhand in 1995. They were already 20 years old, but completed my vintage look of Adidas T-shirt and shell-toe trainers in a contemporary way.
Bootcut jeans, the bell-bottom’s slightly toned-down cousin, were huge in the early noughties before skinny jeans took their place. But our love for flares couldn’t be suppressed for long; they were back on the catwalks as soon as 2015. Fast forward another 11 years to Claudia Winkleman’s celebrated wardrobe for The Traitors at the beginning of 2026, and it was full of, you guessed it, flares.
