Lean, stylish, and armed with ultra-skinny jeans, the Hedi boys are everywhere you look.
Skinny jeans on guys are cool again? The ultra-slim “Hedi boy” look (named after designer Hedi Slimane’s famously skinny aesthetic) is back on the style agenda, blowing up on TikTok and even sneaking its way onto runways.
Cast your mind back to 2005. Slimane’s work at Dior Homme basically kicked off the skinny-jeans revolution. Suddenly every indie rocker from Pete Doherty on down was squeezing into skintight Cheap Mondays — the indie sleaze uniform had youth culture in a chokehold.
But fashion is a pendulum, and by the late 2010s skinny jeans were kicked to the curb. Gen Z on TikTok declared them cheugy, a cringe millennial relic, and “pandemic pants” (super baggy sweats and Y2K wide-legs) took over our closets.
Fast forward to now and skinny jeans are creeping back into the spotlight. High fashion is back on board with the skinny revival, from Paris to Milan. Hedi Slimane himself practically declared an “Age of Indieness” at Celine’s Winter 2023 show with skinny jeans and rockstar swagger on the runway, and even brands like Prada and Paul Smith have started sending leaner looks down their runways.
Of course, the trend’s real breeding ground is social media. TikTok fashion sleuths joke about a “Hedi boy epidemic”, and on Instagram, style gurus are breaking down how to be a Hedi boy on a budget – skinny thrift finds, DIY Saint Laurent vibes and all. Even Vogue dubbed the return of skinny jeans as its “most feared” denim trend revival – which, if anything, only makes the Hedi boy crowd love it more.
There’s a rebellious thrill in resurrecting a style everyone so recently declared dead. Those who have been patiently waiting can now safely dust of their chelsea boots and pull any Rick Owens-coded paraphernalia out of hiding.
