Skinny jeans have a snug fit through the legs and end in a small leg opening. Other names for this style include carrot leg pants, cigarette pants, drainpipes, peg leg pants, pencil pants, skinny pants, slimjims, tapered pants, old-school hood jeans or ice-cream cone pants. In some styles, zippers are needed at the bottom of the leg to facilitate pulling them over the feet. Stretch denim, with anywhere from 2% to 4% spandex, may be used to allow jeans to have a super-slim fit. Skinny jeans are worn by both males and females, and since 2005 has become increasingly popular.

History

The style of pants for men originated in the 1950s with popular male stars such as Roy Rogers, Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid, Zorro and Gene Autry, Marilyn Monroe, and Sandra Dee wearing their pants very slim to the ankle.

Skinny jeans became most notable with country music stars and with the birth of rock 'n' roll in the '50s, when Elvis donned slim-fitting jeans and shocked the country with his gyrating dance moves. Skinny jeans and rock 'n' roll were inextricably linked to create the "bad boy" image that remains today. Skinny jeans were also worn by numerous rock bands, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and others.

Skinny jeans were also very popular in the 1980s, with most heavy metal bands in particular those in the thrash scene such as Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica and Slayer. This was the trend for those who didn't wear spandex, which was popular with the dominant glam metal scene at the time. They were often worn with white high-top sneakers or basket-ball shoes. By the late '80s and early '90s, many hair metal bands such as Poison, Guns N' Roses and Mötley Crüe to Kiss, Bon Jovi and Slaughter, ditched the spandex and wore the form fitted jeans. However with the rise of grunge and hip-hop music in the early nineties and the post thrash movement, skinny jeans quickly went out of favour.

In the early 2000s, they became favored by garage rock revival bands and musicians, such as The Strokes. Model Kate Moss has been credited with reintroducing the jeans to women. Among women, skinny jeans are most often worn tucked into boots or scrunched up over the wearer's footwear. Skinny jeans are also often paired with ballerina shoes, another trend that supermodel Kate Moss has been credited with. The Libertines (particularly Carl Barat and Pete Doherty) used skinny jeans as part of their image. This was later adopted by more mainstream indie pop and indie rock acts such as Test Icicles, Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian, The Kooks and The Horrors, as well as comedians Russell Brand and Noel Fielding, increasing the popularity of skinny jeans amongst men. Some skateboarders prefer to wear the jeans because of their ability to stretch, thus making it easier to move around whilst skating. Skinny jeans are also now very prominent in the BMX scene rendering greater maneuverability and less instances in which the pants are caught in the bikes moving parts. They have grown in the latter half of the 2000's to become associated with a emo and indie rock trend.