From punk singers to pop stars, low-rise baggy shorts started making their way onto red carpets and into music videos, and because we were an impressionable young bunch, they quickly became a big part of our wardrobes too. We layered them with tunic dresses and dared to wear them with crop tops and pointed kitten heels, their versatility truly unmatched.
It was a time, and that time ended.
In the decades after, jean shorts got progressively shorter until they settled on the thigh-grazing denim cut-off, a style we millennials have become very attached to.
But like so many Y2k icons, long jean shorts have been *discovered* by a new generation determined to wear them unironically.
To chart their rise, we must start with the queen of the noughties fashion revival, Bella Hadid. The model was first seen wearing above-the-knee denim shorts way back in 2022, where street style photos captured her in a variety of experimental cuts and washes. She seemed determine to spearhead their rebirth.
The trend bubbled away slowly. Last year, over the American summer, celebrities like Emily Ratajkowski, Hailey Bieber, Billie Eilish and Gigi Hadid were seen in variations of the “jort” – or jean short.
Eilish’s predilection for baggy jorts even helped spawn a new sub-trend, the Adam Sandler aesthetic.