Slim-fit pants or skinny jeans have a snug fit through the legs and end in a small leg opening. Other names for this style include carrot leg pants, cigarette pants, drainpipes, peg leg pants, pencil pants, skinny pants, slimjims, tapered pants, or ice-cream cone pants.

In some styles, zippers are needed at the bottom of the leg to facilitate pulling them over the feet. Stretch denim, with anywhere from 2% to 4% spandex, may be used to allow jeans to have a super-slim fit. Skinny jeans are worn by men and women, often for a particular 'punk' or 'scene' fashion look or style.

 History

The style of pants originated in the 1950s with popular stars such as Roy Rogers, Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid, Zorro and Gene Autry, Marilyn Monroe, and Sandra Dee wearing their pants very slim to the ankle.

Skinny jeans became most notable with country music stars and with the birth of rock 'n' roll in the '50s, when Elvis donned slim-fitting jeans and shocked the country. Skinny jeans and rock 'n' roll were inextricably linked to create the "bad boy" image that remains today. Skinny jeans were also worn by numerous rock bands, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and others.

Skinny Jeans taper completely at the bottom of the leg, whereas drainpipe jeans are skinny but then the lower leg is straight instead of tapering and so they are often slightly baggier at the bottom of the leg than skinny jeans.

Skinny denim jeans

Drainpipe jeans (as they were then called) were also extremely popular in the punk movement of the late 1970s, worn by many bands and scene leaders such as The Clash, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and were sold by the revolutionary shop Sex, run by Vivienne Westwood. The tight fit trousers were often customised with bondage-style zips or patches of other material, and were often worn tucked into industrial-style boots such as Dr Martens.

Skinny jeans were also very popular in the 1980s, with most heavy metal bands, and in particular those in the thrash scene, such as Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica and Slayer. This was the trend for those who didn't wear spandex, which was popular with the dominant glam metal scene at the time. They were often worn with white high-top sneakers or basket-ball shoes. By the late '80s and early '90s, many hair metal bands such as Poison, Guns N' Roses and Mötley Crüe to Kiss, Bon Jovi and Slaughter, ditched the spandex and wore the form fitted jeans. However with the rise of grunge and hip-hop music in the early nineties and the post thrash movement, skinny jeans quickly went out of favour.

In the early 2000s, they became favored by garage rock revival bands, most notably by The Strokes. Model Kate Moss has been credited with reintroducing the jeans to women. Among women, skinny jeans are most often worn tucked into boots or scrunched up over the wearer's footwear,[1] and are also often paired with ballerina shoes. The Libertines (particularly Carl Barat and Pete Doherty) used skinny jeans as part of their image. This was later adopted by more mainstream indie pop and indie rock acts such as Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian, The Kooks and The Horrors, as well as comedians Russell Brand and Noel Fielding, increasing the popularity of skinny jeans amongst men. The skinny jean became very popular in Britain when Topman started producing their own. The buzz later hit America and has now become a staple item of clothing for anyone who wants that Rock 'n' Roll look. Some skateboarders prefer to wear the jeans because of their ability to stretch, thus making it easier to move around whilst skating. Skinny jeans are also now very prominent in the BMX scene resulting in greater maneuverability and less instances in which the pants are caught in the bike's moving parts. They have grown in the latter half of the 2000's to become associated with a scene and indie rock trend. Skinny jeans are now worn by many stars today. They now come in colors such as red, bright blue, gray, green, black, and purple.