Jeans Rising

[Longhorn]

Hark! The end of the ultra-low-rise era nears. Teens loved them, moms didn't. Farewell to the muffin top.

By Peg Tyre
Newsweek

March 27, 2006 issue - Mindy Stern, a life coach from Durango, Colo., likes the look of low-rise jeans. But the trim 34-year-old couldn't imagine leaving the house with her midsection exposed. And forget the so-called whale tail, when the top of a woman's thong is exposed in the back. "That's just tacky!" she says. For the past five years, though, low-rise jeans were just about the only style she could find. So Stern hung on to her well-worn favorites—purchased at Old Navy before waistlines plunged—and hoped for times to change.

Get out your credit card, Mindy. The denim tide is rising again. Stores around the country have begun stocking a new style of jeans, and the gap between the bellybutton and the belt is shrinking at last. Women who are too modest, too big—or maybe too tasteful—to wear pants that barely cover their pubic bone say they welcome the change. The new cut, called midrise, ends about two fingers below the navel and has a waistband that rests two thirds of the way between the hip and the smallest part of the waist. The Gap, which launched its own version of the midrise this season, called "Boy Cut," says they're already a hit. "They're flying off the shelves," reports Gap spokeswoman Kate Molinari. Levi's is introducing a new line of midrise jeans this fall.

<snip>

Why did the style endure so long? It's a mystery. Low-rise jeans aren't very comfortable, and it's tricky to find a pair that fits. "Even standing still in the dressing room, I had to keep hiking them up," says Bethany Stephan, 34, from Collinsville, Ill. Sure, they can look supersexy, but on the whole, low-rise jeans don't flatter many body types. "After having three kids, there is just no way I want to expose the battle zone that is my belly," says Heather Reynolds, 49, of North-port, N.Y., who tried but quickly rejected the style. Even well-toned women find that low-rise jeans can give them the dreaded muffin top—a roll of exposed belly fat—plumbers' butt and the dread Girl Love Handles. "We made fun of the guy who fixed our sink," says Reynolds. "But our kids were paying $150 to get his look."

Hollywood tastemakers, too, say the low-rise look has run its course. "These days, I can see as many cracks at a nightclub as I can on the paint of an old building," says celebrity-stylist Jeanne Yang. "It's tired." And manufacturers are ready for something new. In the last few months, the white-hot jeans market has begun to cool. By introducing styles like mom jeans that older, curvier women can wear, jeans makers are hoping to reignite sales. "Manufacturers know not everyone looks good in low-rises," says Marshal Cohen, retail analyst for the NPD Group. "They hope more-wearable styles will fuel continued growth." Women—especially those with ample bodies—are ready to buy that.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11902222/site/newsweek/

I am so glad to hear this! I HATE low-rise jeans. There was a Saturday Night Live skit a couple of years ago making fun of "mom jeans" and it really pissed me off -- what are we supposed to wear? For me, it was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. So I felt like I was being criticized for being a middle-aged mom.

I got some, mainly by accident because I shop online. They fit fine -- they just look ridiculous and are very uncomfortable. I always have to wear a long top and I'm still always feeling exposed.

My husband noticed last weekend in Denver that everywhere we went, we saw women tugging at their jeans or retucking their tops in -- that is, if we were lucky and didn't get the plumber look! I have three tall, slim but curvy daughters who love low-rise jeans. Yet even they look like they have the "Girl Love Handles."

I just got three pairs of Gloria Vanderbilt high-rise jeans from Kohls for $20 a pair. They are so comfortable and they look so much better on me! They give me a slimmer sihlouette and they stay put when I sit or bend! I'm in heaven!

[MuseRider]

1. Thank goodness!

Very few women actually looked good in the low rise. Those that did looked terrific but I always worried about what they looked like sitting down!

Why is it that many women wear them anyway when they look like hell in them? I would no more expose my belly at 52 than run around naked because I am no longer built for that look. I have seen some mighty nasty sights of things and bodies that I wish I had never seen!

Whatever, now will they please stop making our tops so tight? That is not much better and I am tired of buying large tops just so my little rolls don't show.

Fashion, something I no longer adhere to.

[LiberalinNC]

2. I love low risers and only wear them....I can't stand "mom jeans"!

[Kat45]

3. I absolutely needed jeans when they were all low-rise.

I managed to find a pair that weren't extremely low, and I always wear a top that's long enough and tuck it in. But I have a lot of tops I can't wear with them because when I sit down, the top doesn't stay tucked in.

[legally blonde]

4. thank god!

I am relatively young (26) but I've never had any desire to wear those jeans (maybe I'm too old for that trend anyway). I don't wear "mom" jeans (I like mid-rise), but I don't like having my ass exposed for the whole world to see when I sit, bend, or move. And the only people who look good in those jeans are models who don't have a waist, hips, or thighs.

[LizMoonstar]

5. I hope they don't go all the way back up, at least not everywhere.

I was thrilled when rises began dropping - before they got to whale tail level - because my 'waist' is really high and is not where it's comfortable to wear my pants. personally i support the return of pants that are high-rise in the back and mid/low in the front - that way i can keep my The Ass That Ate New Jersey(TM) covered comfortably without crushing my stomach or ribs (my narrowest waist point sits difectly below the bottom of my ribcage, and it hurts when pants sit there). plus it doesn't hurt that even though this defies conventional fashion logic, the lower waist makes me look taller.

but yes, they need to stop making just one style of jeans for everything because that's dumb.

[NashVegas]

6. I Hate Modern Fashions. Period.

Even among the "better" clothing lines there is little-to-no variety anymore.

I weigh too much now, anyway, to wear low-rise jeans. Like the woman in the article, I simply refused. Bought used Levis at Unclaimed Baggage Center.

Camisoles in public? Bite me! Even if I still looked like I did in my twenties, there's no way I'd use such pretty, delicate things for every-day outer-wear and get them exposed to the elements and pollution.

Broom skirts? Great in small doses, but they take up 80% of the sales floor in their departments.

60-75% of my clothing purchases are now bought eBay's vintage shops.

[politicat]

7. Hooray! I can stop shopping in the men's department!

I've been buying 36-30 men's jeans, because anything smaller won't fit through the hips, but the waist sits below my navel and well below the narrow part of my torso... and it gapes. But they fit better than anything in the women's department has for the last three years.

I've taken to wearing dress pants almost exclusively, but since my pants are getting too big for me again (another yay, but it couldn't come at a worse time in terms of fashion AND finance because summer clothes are simultaneously hideous, unprofessional and ten square inches of cotton gauze costs more than my last pair of wool trousers) I'm gonna have to go shopping.

I hate fashion designers. Short means either really skinny or really stout (I'm neither); nothing is made for women with both boobs and hips, and everything is designed for 16 year olds who don't have any money of their own and nothing is for 30 somethings who DO have money. Idiots.

[NashVegas]

8. Boobs and Hips

I know what you mean. I ordered a "va-voom" dress from Newport News, only to find out that the darts cut straight across my boobs and everything gets flattened. What the hell were they thinking?