I'm Finally Ready to Embrace Skinny Jeans—Here Are 15 Pairs I Love as a Skeptic

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Woman wearing a yellow suede jacket with tassels.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Even when skinny jeans were popular, I was never the biggest fan. Wearing pants doesn't come naturally to me, and skinny jeans represented everything I disliked about them. They are restricting and tight, offering no movement. I also found them tough to style for that exact reason.

With everyone claiming 2026 is the new 2016 (this has yet to be seen IMO, but I digress), there's no hiding the fact that skinny jeans are finally making a comeback. I might as well embrace them—not because I feel the need to follow a trend but because I do genuinely feel inspired by the chic women I've seen wearing them around. There's no denying they have a rock 'n' roll sensibility that makes them intimidating but endlessly cool.

Street style imagery of a woman wearing skinny jeans.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Street style imagery of a woman wearing skinny jeans.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

I decided to scour the internet for pairs of skinny jeans that don't make me cringe. I was surprised by how much there was out there.

Street style imagery of a woman wearing skinny jeans.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Street style imagery of a woman wearing skinny jeans.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Street style imagery of a woman wearing skinny jeans.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

I think the key to loving skinny jeans is just trying a pair that doesn't feel that out of your comfort zone denim-wise. For me, that just meant looking into pairs that felt not so tight and had a wash that gave a vintage feeling. Skinny jeans that look a little worn in also seem to be the norm now, and plenty of them come in a warmer wash than was popular in 2016. That small detail makes them feel a bit more current and a little less twee.

Below, shop the best skinny jeans I could find that just might make me a convert instead of a skeptic.

Tara Gonzalez
Tara Gonzalez
Senior Fashion & Social Editor

Tara Gonzalez is a senior fashion and social editor at WhoWhatWear. where she is interested in exploring the intersection of fashion and culture and why we are drawn to wearing the things we wear and what that says about the world we live in. Previously she worked as a senior fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar. When she isn't writing trend deep dives for WWW, she's working on her newsletter on Substack, Cult Classic, which explores the very best fashion in film and television. She has a degree in creative writing from The University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Brooklyn with her boyfriend and pug Bjork, the later of which has a very extensive collection of dog-sized Sandy Liang sweaters.