Low Rise Jeans And Y2K Fashion Is Making A Comeback

Nothing screams early 2000’s more than low rise jeans and middle parts. As a kid I remember watching Christina Aguilera’s, Britney Spears’, and Destiny Child’s early 2000’s music videos, wishing I was old enough to wear the fly hip-hugger jeans they were. 

Fast-forward around two decades later, the once beloved low cut jeans—or despised depending on your point of view —has made a resurgence. Most fashion trends circle back every 10-20 years, therefore low rise jeans and everything Y2K fashion is right on time. The low jeans comeback gives Gen Z’ers a chance to experience millennial youth fashion and millennials a chance to relive their glory days. 

It may seem as if the low rise jeans have just randomly become cool again, however they’ve been slowly making a reappearance since 2017. While many people welcome the return of the hip huggers, some are dreading it’s resurrection due to them being associated with fat phobia and societal pressures of thinness.

Millennial women that survived the first wave of low rider jeans have the most aversion to them, remembering a pre-body positive era that the low-cut jeans are emblematic of.

“If you were anything above a size 2, you were fat. Millennial women learned that through their most formative years, when they were children and teenagers … they see this trend come back and it’s a trigger,” explains a TikToker in a video with more than 1.3 million views.

While many millennials—and some Gen Z’ers—have denounced low jeans, there are many Gen Z’ers enamored with low cuts because it epitomizes the iconicness of the 2000’s era.

Siena Filippi, 22-year-older owner of the online store ri.reclaimed told NBC News, “Gen Z’s infatuation with low-rise jeans is in part because her generation is enamored with images of the 2000s, of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and the styles and the fashion that they were too young to experience.”

Irrespective of where you lie on the low rise love-hate spectrum, low rise jeans are here and trending. “On TikTok, the hashtag #lowrisejeans has been viewed more than 34 million times,” according to NBC News.