THE JOURNAL
From left to right: Bottega Veneta, photograph courtesy of Bottega Veneta. JW Anderson, photograph courtesy of JW Anderson. Etro, photograph by Mr Filippo Fior/IMAXTREE.COM. LOEWE, photograph by Mr Daniele Oberrauch/IMAXTREE.COM. AMI PARIS, photograph by Daniele Oberrauch/IMAXTREE.COM
Over the past decade, the conversation around the jeans we wear has largely centred on their shape – how we’re moving away from the dominant skinny jean to something baggier. But now that we have settled on a slouchier silhouette as the way forward, with everything from a straight leg to a wide leg getting a free pass, the debate can move on to new territory: the colour of your jeans. The shade to signify summer 2022? Decidedly average mid-blue.
Denim was big at the menswear catwalks this year and the everyman hue of mid-blue dominates. It was paired with crisp white shirts at Bottega Veneta, with directional sweaters at LOEWE, with a 1970s-style shearling jacket at AMI PARIS and with cowboy boots at CELINE HOMME. Celebrities are also taking to it. It’s A Sin’s Mr Omari Douglas wore a pair of slouchy mid-blue Gucci jeans to a Bafta event in April, while The Power Of The Dog’s Mr Kodi Smit-McPhee wore Bottega Veneta mid-blue jeans with a pinstripe shirt and red opera gloves to this year’s Met Gala. Vogue dubbed it “a celebration of casual Fridays”.
If the 1990s had inky indigo and a skinny rock’n’roll shape, and the 1980s owned bleached denim in drainpipes and straight legs, it’s probably the late 1990s when mid-blue last reigned supreme, an era when casual Fridays were probably more strictly observed. A proudly everyman shade, 1990s jeans have since been studied for their normcore prowess. See the comfort-first denim worn by Messrs Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Jordan and Larry David, often with dad trainers and a purposefully anonymous sweatshirt. Mr Adam Sandler, the most googled style icon of 2021, is also a key reference. His red carpet denim has become a cult favourite with menswear obsessives.
“Levi’s 501s don’t feel too tight or too loose. I think that’s the key behind its success”
A lot of today’s mid-blue jeans work best with the looser shapes that were favoured in the 1990s. CELINE HOMME’s oversized styles are the ultimate for this look, not least for adding creative director Mr Hedi Slimane’s trademark lost-weekend coolness to proceedings. Acne Studios and Valentino, meanwhile, focus on a skater-worthy baggy shape, like those favoured by Mr Justin Bieber, perhaps via Sandler’s influence.
An alternative perspective on mid-blue denim comes from looking a little farther back, to the 1970s. Styles such as Douglas’s reference the disco-friendly decade. See Mr Yves Saint Laurent on a Marrakech rooftop, Mr Lou Reed on the streets of New York, Mr Bob Marley on tour with a guitar, all wearing double denim with enviable nonchalance. This is a mood that has been replicated on the catwalk this year. Mid-blue jeans were paired with a sweater and bare feet at the LOEWE show.
CELINE HOMME AW22 runway in Paris, 3 March 2022. Photograph courtesy of CELINE HOMME
It’s also the take on mid-blue that Séfr’s founders, Messrs Per Fredrikson and Sinan Abi, conjure up with their straight-leg jeans. “I think of how [folk singer] Jim Croce dressed in the late 1960s and early 1970s,” says Abi. While the style comes in various washes, Abi names mid-blue as “a hue that feels perfectly right for our aesthetic. With the tobacco-coloured stitching and our signature Séfr leather patch on the back, it makes for a unique appearance,” he says.
Unique, but also subtle. That’s the winning combination found with straight-leg jeans in a mid-blue shade. It feels right for a moment when simplicity in style is having a moment and we are rediscovering the classics (see also that pinstripe shirt or the white T-shirt). Indeed, Abi says, Séfr’s straight-leg jeans are “a homage to the Levi’s 501. A pair of regular-fit jeans that don’t feel too tight or too loose. I think that’s the key behind its success.”
“The trends have been going in both directions – exaggerated wide silhouettes on one side of the spectrum and slim, distressed denim on the other”
The rise of mid-blue jeans aligns with a centrist approach to denim, and dressing in general, in our post-skinny era. “I feel the trends have been going in both directions – exaggerated wide silhouettes on one side of the spectrum and slim, distressed denim on the other,” says Abi. “This is the timeless option in the very centre.”
FRAME has created a similar shape to Séfr’s straight-leg with its L’Homme slim-fit jeans. Mr Erik Torstensson, FRAME’s co-founder and chief creative officer, describes it as “a nice gentle transition from a skinny”. He says it was made as a response to FRAME’s over-arching mission to produce “clothes that we want to wear” and to go beyond fashion, to design classic territory that looks nice, but is also – whisper it – useful.
“We make denim that we know will enhance our customers’ lives and service their wardrobes,” says Torstensson. “Timeless, classic, wardrobe essentials.” Although, again, the jeans come in different washes, it is perhaps the mid-blue that best fulfils this idea. Torstensson maintains it is “versatile, effortless and trans-seasonal, [to be worn] night or day. An everyday go-to, for sure.”
For Torstensson, like Abi, the mid-blue is less about those normcore moments. Instead, it takes denim back to its roots. “I think the shade conjures a little of denim’s historical moments, from workwear to 1930s Hollywood,” he says. “It gives it a nice vintage, masculine allure.” And if we’re able to channel just a little of Sandler’s cult style at the same time, so much the better.