On the web, you can find different versions of the origin of low-waisted jeans. Some talk about 1970s rock stars with jeans on their hips, others about hip-hop artists and their low-cut pants that show the elastic of their underwear. In big fashion, however, Lee Alexander McQueen is considered the creator of this silhouette. In his first collection since 1993, from Central Saint Martin’s Taxi Driver collection, he first showed pants that exposed the upper part of the buttocks. The designer gave his invention a name – bumsters. There are almost no photos from that show, but a year later these bold pants appeared in his famous Nihilism show. That same year, Madonna introduced attackers to pop culture by wearing them in an MTV commercial. Subsequently, they became a landmark for McQueen and largely determined the fashion of zero. According to his own words, he made such pants to optically lengthen the torso and show the lower back, which he considered the most beautiful part of the body.
Next, the idea of hip jeans was taken up by other fashion brands, followed by mass producers. As early as 2000, Abercrombie & Fitch, Levi’s and 7 For All Mankind released their bumster versions. The “ambassadors” of this silhouette were pop stars of the time: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé and others. They appeared more than once in low-waisted jeans in music videos and on red carpets. Thanks to them, until the end of 2000, such pants became the object of desire of girls all over the world.
At the beginning of 2010, the popularity of these jeans began to decline and fashion brands switched to models with a higher cut. In recent years, the world’s best fashionistas prefer boyfriends, bananas, or mom-fit jeans to bums. Pants that sit low on the hips have long been a sign of bad taste.
However, fashion is cyclical and no trend disappears without a trace. Already this year, in the wake of nostalgia for the 90s and zero, we saw the return of this controversial thing. Bella Hadid, Victoria Beckham or Hailey Bieber have already appeared in such jeans, and Dsquared2, Celine and Brandon Maxwell showed them on the catwalk.
If you want to wear low-rise jeans without looking like a Britney cartoon from 2003, pair them with a simple basic tee or oversized shirt instead of a crop top. This will definitely make the image more modern and hide what you should not show others.