Prototype Issue
Lean and Mean. Who's to Blame for Skinny Jeans?
By Jason Venzor
(page 1 of 1)Though it seems as if the season of the skinny jean is quickly passing us by, a few loose ends on the trend have gone unexplored. RTLA took it there.
Why was everyone rushing to look like a malnourished Ramone after having spent the majority of this century still living out the baggy potential of hip-hop? Beats have been fat. Jeans have been loose.
But as hip-hop influenced America, and particularly urban culture, there was another reaction to the dominance of big and sagging pants: The Latino Punk; homemade skinny jeans and all.
Latino teenagers have traditionally maintained a low-key presence in shaping urban culture. Frequently being the children of non-English speakers, they are accustomed to being outsiders relegated to silence.
But once reggaeton fully assimilated the currency of hip-hop and took a share of the spotlight away from it’s bigger brother, people started to pay more attention to the other forms of Latino youth expression: the thriving skate/punk culture visible all over our fair city.
Roll by any high school and you see brown-skinned kids rocking skinny jeans, black T-shirts and punk rock accessories. This is not the baggy-jean-with-wallet-chain punk of 15 years ago. Back then, hip-hop still wasn’t mainstream culture, so there was more solidarity between the two.
But as times changed, hip-hop took over and became just another part of the establishment to rebel against. So what happens? Skaters and punks stop wearing baggy pants like they did in 1992 and start rocking bone hugging skinny jeans like they did back in 1977, before the rise of hip-hop. The society has grown so loose that the real rebellion is found in tightness.
The fashion world has sensed this sea change for quite some time. Habitual clothing line has been making skinny jeans for over three years now, and successfully marketing them to celebrities and taste makers. B
ut these jeans that are sold for hundreds of dollars in boutique shops around the world are made in Los Angeles, where Latino punks have been rocking a cheaper, grittier, version of the same lean look for years. It was only a matter of time before someone took notice.
Mainstream exposure to this phenomenon came in the form of Larry Clark’s latest (and fuzziest) film Wassup Rockers, which exposed a group of young Central American rebels from South Central LA. Punk Rock? Check. Skateboards? Check. Skinny, skinny jeans? Oh, hell yeah.
In one of the most eerily telling scenes in the film, the kids stumble into a Beverly Hills fashion gathering. Noted fashion designer, Jeremy Scott, playing someone ostensibly not far from himself, sizes them up and down and declares: “I just found my next campaign!”
Filmed back in 2005, the scene predicted the style hype that would come to surround and eventually assimilate the Mexican Ramones look, without much acknowledgement as to who inspired the craze. But these kids haven’t shifted or changed because of any trend. Unlike hip-hop, they kept it real all along.
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