Cigarette pants, also known as pencil or skinny pants, were popular in the 1950s for both men and women. They fell out of fashion in the 1960s but were revived by the punk scene in the 1970s and again in the 2000s by fashion icons like Kate Moss. They are currently popular due to complementary fashion trends and the rise of jeggings.
Cigarette pants are form-fitting pants that feature a straight foot opening instead of a cone or flare. Also known as “kitchen tube pants,” “pencil pants,” or “skinny pants,” these pants first became popular during the 1950s in both men’s and women’s fashion. While men most commonly wore them in black, women wore them in denim or cropped as “Capri” pants. Since the 1950s, cigarette pants have gone out of style over the decades, largely following various musical movements.
Cigarette pants were particularly favored by stars like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Sandra Dee during the 1950s. As the ’50s gave way to the 1960s counterculture, pants with a flare, cut of the boot or bell bottom eclipsed the popularity of straight-leg pants. While flared pants became a fashion staple of the 1970s, many who were part of the underground punk scene began wearing cigarette pants again. In the 1980s, leggings, spandex, and skinny jeans were all the rage, and especially favored by heavy metal bands.
By the early 1990s, baggy jeans and overalls had begun to replace skinny pants of any kind due to fashion influences from hip-hop and grunge music. While tights worn with oversized tops had been popular with young women in the 1980s, this trend reversed in the early to mid-1990s, when wide leg pants were frequently paired with fitted tops. As flared pants came back into fashion in the mid to late 1990s, cigarette pants fell out of style again. Style icons like supermodel, Kate Moss, and actress, Sienna Miller, are credited with bringing women’s cigarette pants back to mainstream styling in the new millennium.
The revival of cigarette pants and other slim-fit variations in the 2000s can also be attributed to complementary fashion trends. For example, fashion boots are often worn over pants, and they slip more easily over straight or tapered leg pants than those with a flare. Slouchy boots, which returned to fashion in the 2000s, are also more easily worn over skinny pants, and ballerinas are best worn with tapered or straight legs to prevent the pant leg from covering the shoe and chafing. soil. Another incarnation of skinny pants that has become popular in the new millennium are “jeggings,” a hybrid of leggings or tights and skinny jeans.
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