Your jncos may be frayed and soaked, but the Slim Shady LP just came out and you’re off to the theater with friends to see The Matrix.
I want to go back
Take me back, to the peak of American society.
And a year later hybrid theory comes out and 11 year old me is convinced there will never be a better album
Raaad!
We called it soggy bottoms! In the winter as it dried sometimes it would leave a salt line 🤣
Hot damn! It’s the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Mine got so raggedy that my toe caught in the hem. Fell down a hill and tore a tendon in my foot.
1999? Did bell-bottoms have a come-back in 99? I remember a brief spurt, but the heyday of bell bottoms was in the 70’s.
I don’t know that I’d call them bell-bottoms like the ones in the 70s (with skinny/normal legs, then large at the bottom). Pants in this style in the 90s and early 00s were really baggy all over and frequently dragging on the ground.
Also, cut very low, below the hips.
They were so comfortable. I miss them.
Believe me, the 70’s ones did too.
At least the 70s had big platform shoes to keep them off the floor.
bell-bottoms have a come-back in 99
Kind-of. Think Austin Powers, Spice Girls, TLC, Oasis, Doc Martins. The late 90’s definitely had some aspects that looked like a cultural revival of the 1960s that came out of slacker/ dropout culture.
Yeah they were huge when I was in school, but I’m pretty sure the first pair are JNCOs
Yes, but we called them “boot flairs.”
No, these are not bellbottoms. They’re just pants with huge legs, there were shorts like that too. It was a fad in the late 90s
Holy wow. They just took 70’s pants and turned the dial aaall the way up, didn’t they?
And then they stuck a wheel in our shoe.
That’s one of the main things I’m sorry I missed. Y’all can’t afford houses, but at least you got wheels in your shoes.
The fuck are those prices? 2k bucks for pants?
It’s because they’re for a niche now. I don’t remember them breaking the bank when I got them. More expensive than Levi’s sure but they definitely added a zero.
They were $80-100 jeans in '90s dollars back then, so about the same price with inflation really. They were always a niche corner of the market when compared to regular jeans, they were just a popular niche for a while.
are you trying to say $80-100 in 1999 is equivalent to $2000 today?
No, but it’s equivalent to the $180-280 most of the current JNCOs are actually priced at. I think the $2000 comment was exaggerating for effect, because I can’t even find anything on their website over $300.
In the late 90’s, jeans with gigantic legs were in for both genders, IIRC jeans that were tight/normal down to the knee and then went completely conical down to a huge cuff were called “flares.” Or you had the JNCO style 'eight sizes too big" parachute pants look, which was somehow completely separate to the “hammer pants” thing.
The early 2000s had their own take on bell bottoms. Unlike 60’s70’s bell bottoms which were worn much higher up on the waist, were fairly baggy their entire length with kind of ruffled cuffs worn by both sexes, 21st century bell bottoms were pretty much only a female thing, they were worn much lower at the waist overlapping the “hip hugger” trend, and were worn fairly tight down to lower calf and then had a significantly curved trumpet bell shaped cuff to cover the upper of the shoe but not sweep the floor like 90’s parachute pants. Meanwhile guys wore a lot of boot cut carpenter jeans that all had that pointless hammer loop on the left leg.
It’s not pointless if you work in a trade, I used to hang paint brushes on them sometimes, but yeah, I don’t really wear them except a few times in the past I had manual labor jobs before I finished college.
I took carpentry in high school, and the school issued me a tool belt & tools. I’m left handed, so I wore my hammer on the left side, and the bottom of the handle would catch in that loop and that would keep it parallel with my thigh, it didn’t bang around. It actually worked out fairly well; if I were to start wearing a full tool belt with a hammer again I might go back to carpenter jeans if they even still make them.
But, most people are right handed and wear their hammers on the right, and having tried it I can say hanging a hammer straight from that loop; it’ll bash your knee out. It’s too low.
You can still get carpenter jeans if you need them, actually they are most commonly sold at industrial painting retailers. They are usually white because someone thought it was a good idea to make painters jeans white, lol.
If I were to guess, I’d say that there’s no color you could dye painter’s clothes that wouldn’t get ruined by paint, so it’s more cost effective to just leave them cotton white.
They did at my school, bell bottoms were huge in 99-2000 but died a quick death around 01.
Yeah, I do remember a flash around then. It seemed to come and go pretty quickly.
We never referred to them as bell bottoms but by their brand name; Jncos. And they were rather popular for a subsect of teenage/young adult culture in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Jncos are absolutely not bell bottoms. Bell bottoms are tight at the top.
It was some point in the 90s. 94-95 maybe. It was brief, because they were, and always had been, a bad idea.
My high school janitor said he loved them because he didn’t have to sweep the halls as often.
My mom definitely made that joke
That’s classic!
Bellbottoms were literally designed to avoid getting wet by being easy to roll up…ms bell or perhaps mr bottom is rolling in their grave.
These are not really bellbottoms, the whole leg is big.
Yeah aren’t the pictures above of “flares” rather than bell bottoms?
As someone with stubby, short legs, I’m always partying like it’s 1999.
I graduated HS in 2000 and never really saw more than a very small handful of people wear JNCOs. I’m in northern Virginia though so maybe they just weren’t as popular around here. Didn’t see any JNCOs up in the Toronto area either.
I graduated in 2005, and by then bell bottoms on girls were back in fashion; they didn’t quite hit the ground, there was just a little bit of the sole of her tennis shoe and a bit of toe visible. I kinda liked that look, then we went with 20 years of “heat shrink that ends an inch above the ankle” for some reason.
“heat shrink that ends an inch above the ankle” for some reason.
Pretty sure the reason is butts
You can have it tight in the butt and loose below the knee.
That’s why them bell bottoms were worn fairly tight for most of their length too, doesn’t explain the cuffs.
like high heels?
I just asked my wife who graduated 2001. She says they were popular late middle school/early HS which would have been like 96–98. I was in Canada at that time so makes sense I wouldn’t have noticed.
I remember the bell bottoms coming back. Big fan of the 2000s remix version.
heat shrink
I tried some jeans once that I could barely get on. The guy said those were considered baggy. That was when I knew for certain fashion was stupid.
Same age. In NYC it was skaters and ravers. I’d imagine any major metro is going to have more counter culture people. Especially back then vs now, when culture didn’t have the same Internet pathways to diffuse so quickly geographically.
In contrast, I tried to buy a pair of “relaxed fit” men’s jeans at Target a few years back, fit properly-to-a-little-loose around the waist, and I couldn’t zip them up and have male genitalia at the same time. Had to triple check they were supposed to be for men.
Yeah, I got a bit of an ass on me, but I ain’t a pear. Most relaxed they had were still skinny jeans. Makes me miss my hand-me-down D-Lux jeans (we were poor, couldn’t afford Jncos… or new pants for the youngest child, apparently).
I still want them, with my hair I could whip up cool Disco Stu cosplay.
That’s why you gotta pair those with the right footwear
Ahhhh I remember and I hate remembering
Lots of people talking about JNCO. But honestly kikwear had superior jeans and they had a stash pocket to get drugs in to raves. And Sutters were a stitch above the rest
Lmao same conversation decades later
They’re called *piss flickers" for a reason.
