At the Paris haute couture shows earlier this month, amid the goddess gowns and warrior armour, the plumes of feathers and sculptural silhouettes, an arresting moment of reality: Kaia Gerber in jeans, opening Valentino’s 76-look spectacle at Château de Chantilly.
Except, well, not really. These weren’t just jeans, nor were they made for anything approaching your, or my, reality. Rather, Valentino’s take on the trusty wardrobe staple was painstakingly crafted from silk gazar and embroidered with micro glass beads in a trompe l’oeil effect to resemble denim. A few exits later came some actual denim; albeit rare vintage Levi’s 501 XX Big E jeans with gilded arabesque applique. Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli wasn’t the only one to give the ultimate everyman uniform a 1% of the 1% treatment.
At Balenciaga, they were hand-painted canvas; at Jean Paul Gaultier, in a collection guest-designed by Paco Rabanne’s Julien Dossena, more trompe l’oeil beading. It’s official: this is the era of jet-set jeans.
Couture might offer the purest, most expensive version of the trend, but it’s bigger than that. When Vetements released its posh upcycled pairs in 2015, the £900 price tag was flabbergasting. Now, £1,000+ jeans are if not ubiquitous, increasingly common. See Alaïa’s superflares (£1,150), Schiaparelli’s gold-buttoned bootcuts (€1,950) and Celine’s buckled waist Dylan jeans (£890). Meanwhile Chanel’s pre-collection logo printed and embroidered pair (£2,590) prove to be just as covetable as everything else in the maison’s arsenal.
Obviously, on planet A-list where concerns like rent do not exist, the trend is in full flow. This week Rihanna — heavily pregnant and a woman who has rewritten the supposed rules of maternity dressing — went for dinner at Santa Monica’s Giorgio Baldi wearing a kimono printed with $100 bills. But the item that really screamed money to those who know? Her baggy Balenciaga scribble jeans (pretty much sold out, but you can find similar for £1,390 at Mytheresa right now).
Elsewhere, Beyoncé’s version of dressing down means, at least according to a recent Instagram pic, a Jay-Z tour tee and baggy Vetements jeans (available on Farfetch for £1,280). Sam Smith bucked the Barbie pink memo at the film’s London premiere, instead also opting for ultra-baggy, light-wash Vetements denim and a similarly outsized sweater.
Arguably the item to define the current season is Bottega Veneta’s printed nubuck leather ‘jeans’ which sent the fashion set gaga. They’ll set you back £4,660. Never mind if you’re Kendall Jenner and Repossi creative director Gaia Repossi, both of whom are fans. Another member of the Bottega fan club? Margot Robbie, who was spotted wearing them in both Sydney and Seoul airports. Us mortals might baulk at the thought of denim, or in this case denim doppelgangers, for a flight — but clearly this Barbie isn’t affected by mini wine spillages, or swollen legs, at 30,000ft.
In April, I was taken with the jazzy, embellished chocolate brown jeans from British Vogue fashion director Julia Sarr-Jamois’s Frame capsule collection. Don’t mind if I do, I thought, and went to add to basket. The price tag? £11,480. Oof! Sadly I stepped away, but others didn’t. At the time of writing, they’ve almost sold out. Embroidered with 50,000 Swarovski crystals, each pair took 120 hours to make. “These jeans are a piece of art, one-of-a-kind, which makes them more desirable,” says Frame’s co-founder Erik Torstensson.
But why the popularity? And why now, specifically, given what is euphemistically referred to as the “current climate” (translation: economic shitshow)? The loosening of dress codes for one thing.
Jeans, like track pants, have gone from rebel to establishment, meaning you’ll get mileage out of them way beyond casual Fridays. Denim, and the modern freedom to wear jeans in all of life’s instances, means this age-old fabric sits as the blueprint of the undone aesthetic. Embracing the effortlessly chic nature of ‘throwing on a pair of jeans’ and leaning into a quieter and discrete approach to style. “Customers are willing to pay more for luxury pieces that they can appreciate in their everyday,” says Torstensson.
Heather Gramston, Browns’ senior head of men’s & women’s buying, agrees: “Its presence on recent runways has challenged traditional ways to wear it and taken the jean from a more casual wardrobe staple to a must-have investment worthy piece.” Put like that, it seems almost savvy. Surely it’s better to drop a ton of cash on something you’re going to wear every day than a va-va-voom dress with limited opportunities. Use the cost per wear metric and suddenly you’re looking at something that, if not sensible, is at least a (slightly) more reasonable proposition than it first appears.
There is something tantalising too about the soft power of jet set jeans. There’s a confidence required to wear something that doesn’t scream expense. Unpopular opinion: jeans aren’t as easy as people like to make out. Shopping for them is fraught. And your jeans will tell you long before your partner if you’ve overdone it on holiday. A great pair of vintage 501s you picked up in a thrift shop is nice in theory, but holding out for them is futile. Expensive jeans aren’t necessarily better jeans, but designers can work sorcery with cut and silhouette.
“Our customer loves great quality and they rely on us to curate an edit of luxury, well cut and brilliant quality denim that is flattering. They are definitely willing to invest a little bit more if the fit, fabrication and sizing is perfect,” says Lianne Wiggins, head of womenswear at Matches. Nevertheless, for most of us, four- or five-figure jeans remain a ridiculous foible of the ultra-moneyed. But should you want to tap into the look, there are some hacks to consider.
“I would suggest investing in a raw denim jean for a luxury look, these are durable and will last longer than denim which is stretchy and notoriously have a higher plastic composition,” says Torstensson. “It is really important to invest in denim with a really good recovery in the fabric, otherwise it can stretch the more you wear and may not be as flattering as when you first tried them on,” says Wiggins. For Gramston, it’s all about accessorising, “the key to elevating a product is often in the styling”, she advises. See Alexa Chung at Wimbledon, giving her jeans a bit of Centre Court swish courtesy of a Polo Ralph Lauren shirt, nonchalantly tied sweater and patent mules. Or look at Kim Kardashian wearing jeans and a white tee in Miami with the Beckhams last week. She popped on a hot pink Chanel belt-bag with them, however, for a dash of Kardashian swagger.
My advice? I cannot emphasise this enough, get them tailored to fit (Northwest Londoners, I highly recommend the very talented Dharmesh Parmar at Hampstead Atelier, in South End Green). And try swapping blue for white. After all, what could be more jetset than jeans that have clearly never been near the Tube?
The top five jet set jeans:
Vetements
Vetements, £1,280, farfetch.com
Alaïa
Alaïa, £ 970, mytheresa.com
Schiaparelli
Schiaparelli, €1950, schiaparelli.com
Balenciaga
Balenciaga, £1390, mytheresa.com
Celine
Celine, £890, celine.com
