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It feels significant that on a night when the betting odds favored rapper Kendrick Lamar declaring Aubrey Graham a pedophile to a live viewing audience of 120 million (he did not, although he might as well have), the subsequent talk of the town would be about pants. And yet, despite a blockbuster Super Bowl halftime show that included nearly a dozen of the Grammy and Pulitzer-winning artist’s certified bangers and Serena Williams appearing to C-Walk, the collective interest, from The Cut to The Guardian, seems fixated on a single aspect: K. Dot’s bootcut jeans.
The jeans, which the rapper paired with a custom leather varsity-style jacket from Jamaican-British designer Martine Rose, a black fitted baseball cap and a massive lowercase “a” chain with thinly veiled implications, seem to be such a hit partly due to the fact that they are a curiosity for a denim market currently dominated by a straighter, baggier fit.
In stark contrast to the mainstream, Kendrick’s show-stopping flares, designed by Celine and priced at $1,300, are a true slim bootcut, tapered to the knee and cut long through the leg for a fitted look that pools wide at the shoe. (In this case, a pair of Deion Sanders’s Nike Air DT Max.) It’s a style reminiscent of the True Religion jeans that defined the early 2000s, an era that’s been decidedly (and perhaps unfairly) maligned in recent decades as unflattering, if not properly goofy. Yet the public is fairly unified in agreement: Lamar’s bell-bottoms look particularly good.
For those unsure if Lamar’s already famous flares are a bellbottomwether of a new jean age or yet another instance of celebrities truly being not like us, I’ll kindly point you towards runway-to-market designs and a particularly “quirked-up” Timothée Chalamet as indications that the style is fully back. For those who are looking to bet big on the bootcut, but perhaps lacking the rap capital that Mr. Lamar’s designer joints require, know that there are a ton of flared styles available to you.
Shop Bootcut Jeans
Levi’s 517 has been the go-to bootcut style for decades now. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Just like Kendrick’s except $1,241 less expensive.
For a wider, more relaxed option, Tonywack’s reconstructed flares are a modern interpretation of a very 2000s style.
Flared jeans that you can rave in? Diesel is onto something here.
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