JNCO Jeans: A Story of Nonconformity
JNCO Jeans are peak 90's with their (now comically) oversized pant legs and the classic graffiti-style embroidered logo. But in 1996, they jeans were highly sought after. They were completely contrary to the standard, straight-leg jeans that had been popular throughout the 80s and 90s. Instead, the legs were massive — the biggest pair boasting a 50" circumference.
The jeans were a symbol of cool, embracing a principle of challenging conventionalism. For teens, this is a particularly attractive quality for a brand because it shirks tradition, thus setting the teens apart from their parents.
In the 90’s this tension was revealed in the correlative rise of JNCO jeans and fall of Levi’s. A New York Times article from 1999 said, “Levi’s had been cool for decades — effortlessly cool, the kind that seems like it will never end.” But in the mid-90’s, the cool had run out on Levi’s and ran straight into the arms of the urban/skater/cutting edge JNCO brand.
Fortune translated one teen’s comment into this message: “Losers wear Levi’s; hipsters wear JNCOs.”
It didn’t matter that JNCO jeans were horribly impractical and a bit of a burden on skateboarders. What mattered was that they were different. They challenged the status quo of straight, tight jeans that had become popular in the 70’s, 80’s, and early 90s.
Levi’s were the brand of baby boomers — they were established and expected. Lee Clow, the chief creative officer for the ad agency behind Levi’s in 1999 contended, “the brand’s mainstream, unitary, ‘massified’ image had become a major impediment to acceptance among young consumers.”
This is a common theme. It’s a story of anti-establishment, fighting the man, carving out a new direction. Often these stories are tied to activist/political movements like with Malcom X, MLK, the Black Panthers, Bernie Sanders or bands like the Grateful Dead and Rage Against the Machine.
Even Sean Dee, the brand director for Levi’s in the late 90’s said, “loose jeans is not a fad. It’s a paradigm shift.”
JNCO jeans ushered in a new era of style: from suburban malls to urban influence. The brand’s creators Jacques Yaakov Revah and Haim Milo Revah were Moroccan-born, French-raised designers who developed the jeans after noticing how Latino men in LA tended to wear baggy pants.
The Revah brothers grew up watching American shows, and their goal was to go from observing American culture to influencing it. And for a time, they did: baggy pants became a symbol, affecting the culture and society.
Rap was the music of the decade. Parents hated it, but teens loved it. And those same teens are the ones who altered the music scene. According to the New York Times, “Rap was the expression of a genuine, undiluted, unmediated subculture; it really did come from the streets. Saturated by this aura, baggy pants became a generational signature.”
JNCO jeans disseminated the culture of ravers and rappers into American suburbia, transitioning the style from a small subculture into mainstream appeal.
Then as the LA Times said, “Shortly before the 1998 holiday season, the wide-leg fad dimmed as quickly as it had ignited.”
From around 1995 to 1999, the billowing pant legs of JNCO jeans were the vessel for non-conformist and anti-establishment. But perhaps it was their popularity that led to their demise. Perhaps it’s the mainstream appeal of any anti-establishment carrier that ultimately kills it.
