Year-End Jeans

On 2025's best-sellers, biggest hits, and how denim connects us.

It was a good year for jeans. We had Kendrick Lamar in Céline bell bottoms at the Super Bowl, GAP x Katseye’s sensational dance ad, and the final chapter of Beyoncé’s Western-themed collaboration with Levi’s. Fashion’s continued interest in cowboy culture, grounded so heavily in denim, helped buoy jeans to the top of the trend pyramid this year, but what’s interesting is that it wasn’t all bootcuts up there. High-rises, baggies, straights, barrels, slims, rigids, mid-rises, skinnies – all of these fits mattered. And they were everywhere, both high (Chanel pre-fall) and low.

From left: The jeans on this year’s runways at Chanel, Valentino and Brandon Maxwell.

I suspect the return of skinnier styles is contributing to this feeling that jeans are everywhere. Think about it. There are a lot of people who never stopped loving and wearing skinny jeans, even when the fashion world went all-in on looser fits. Now, those skinnier jean-lovers are back in the conversation and it’s so great. Everyone who wears jeans, whatever their fit, has a place at the table right now.

The Top 10 best-selling styles by quantity (not purchase price) at JoJ this year were:

1. Levi’s 90s Selvedge 501

2. Madewell Relaxed Bootcut

3. Buck Mason Roper

4. Ayr Secret Sauce

5. Ossou Noon in the Horizon Wash

6. Old Navy High-Waisted Vintage Slim

7. Old Navy High-Waisted Barrel

8. Frame Pixie Arrow

9. Levi’s Wedge Bootcut

10. GAP High-Rise 90s Straight

I think it’s important to acknowledge, especially today, that jeans are for everybody. As I told The Cut, they’re a nonpartisan issue. A truly American icon. Remember, the US once made the best jeans in the world. Denim is an intrinsic part of our country’s cultural identity. They’re rock and roll. They’re punk. They’re miners, and railroad workers, and pioneers, and hippies. Rebels wear jeans. Cowboys wear jeans. Jeans represent a kind of wildness and freedom. And all of us – no matter what side of the political coin you flip for – want the freedom to live as we dream. There’s a school of thought that believes that an uptick in jean sales indicates that a recession is coming. I prefer to think that a resurgence of jeans in pop culture and our closets could, in fact, signal that we are less divided than we think.

A corner of my work/moodboard. Connection is an important theme for me.

I want to end this letter – and this year – by thanking everyone who sent me photos and tribute posts about the ivy that famously covered the Fred Segal center on Melrose Avenue. My family’s Ron Herman flagship was in that building, and yes, seeing it bare and in that state of disrepair is sad. An era-ending visual, even though The Store, as those of us who lived and worked there called it, closed two years ago. I wrote about the closing here, but it’s always nice to read people’s memories of the place. “That denim bar… and NO PHONES… and that upstairs men’s section I could never afford but they’d let me try it on nonetheless,” wrote @waltongogginsbonafide in a comment on @officialevercarradine’s Instagram post. “It was such a welcoming place. Truly,” Ever replied. I hope for more of The Store’s open doors and hearts in 2026.

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That’s all for this week. I’m taking a break and will be back in mid-January. Thank you for reading and trusting me with your jeans. Until next time, Denim Forever and Happy New Year.

Jane

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More good links:

If you’re traveling, here are some really great flight jeans.

These are 25 Things I Loved Wearing with Jeans in 2025. (This lip stain, these moccasins, and unisex readers that look like classic, vintage army-issue frames.)

I made bandanas. They sold out. Email me if you wish to be notified when they are back in stock at the end of January. They’re cute and will come in more colors!