It happened practically overnight. Last year, about 8% of Pacsun’s denim sales were made up of baggy oversized jeans. A year later, baggy jeans now make up 80% of the company’s denim sales.
According to Pacsun’s vp of women’s merchandising and design, Addie Rintel, Pacsun has been watching the meteoric rise of baggy denim with great intent. On Thursday, it announced an entire back-to-school campaign, called “Better in Baggy,” focused on oversized everything, including denim.
“What’s funny about the baggy trend is how quickly it came up,” Rintel said. “When skinny jeans became a trend, it took a good three years for them to truly take hold and become the majority of our assortment. But with baggy, it’s basically been overnight. If we had moved faster, we probably could have [transitioned to an] 80% baggy assortment by December [2023].”
But in a fashion environment where trends change so rapidly, dropping everything to chase a new trend may not have proven the smartest move, Rintel said. You can’t immediately determine what will be a long-lasting trend versus one that will be gone before you can get the inventory to jump on it.
In order to tell the difference, Pacsun has been working closely with Pinterest, which Rintel said has been having a major comeback over the last few years. This year, Pinterest crossed 500 million monthly active users. More than 30% of Pinterest’s growth in the last year has been with Gen-Z shoppers who are major drivers of the baggy jeans trend.
Pacsun worked with Pinterest to analyze search and pin data to confirm its baggy trend suspicions. They also teamed up for the Better in Baggy campaign. For the back-to-school season, Pinterest and Pacsun created interactive window displays for Pacsun’s more than 300 U.S. stores. The windows mirror a large Pinterest board with a QR code on them where consumers can shop Pacsun’s fall Pinterest boards. The companies will also host an influencer events in New York’s Hudson Valley this summer.
“We worked with Pinterest to pull from their trend data and showcase the biggest fashion trends in our windows,” Rintel said. The trends are presented in full outfits. “From our focus groups, that’s how a lot of customers at this age shop: They look for full occasion outfits on places like Pinterest — not occasions like weddings, but ‘outfits for a coffee date’ or ‘outfits for a movie night.'”
From March to May, Pinterest’s data showed a resurgence in baggy jeans as part of a larger trend toward oversized clothes and Y2K-inspired outfits. Pinterest found that searches for “oversized jerseys” were up 175%, searches for “baggy outfits ideas” were up 290% and searches for “Y3K outfits” were up 6030%.
Pacsun, which last reported over $900 million in annual revenue, for 2022, is sensitive to subtle shifts in the denim market.
“Denim is the cornerstone of the Pacsun brand.” said Richard Cox, vp of men’s merchandising and global partnerships at Pacsun. The baggy trend has extended across men’s and women’s side of the business, making up 80% of Pacsun’s sales on both sides. “The shift toward baggy and loose-fits shows a movement toward comfort and individuality.”
Outside of Pacsun, baggy and oversized clothes have been having a moment. One of the signature items from J.Crew’s new men’s creative director, Brendon Babenzien, has been the Giant Fit Chinos released last year. Abercrombie has had similar success with baggy jeans.
“When it comes to bottoms strength, the bootcut, the flares, the ’90s and the Baggy Dad [styles] all are doing really well as fashion fits,” said Michelle Gass, Levi’s president and CEO, on the company’s first-quarter earnings call in May. “We’re seeing great traction ongoing with the 501 jean, but we’re also in the denim cycle of looser, baggier. We’re definitely seeing it in women’s, but also seeing it in men’s.”
According to Rintel, the baggy jeans trend was accelerated by the growing consensus that skinny jeans are a millennial thing — a symbol that the wearer is out of touch, older and holding on to the styles of yesterday. Rintel mentioned a moment last year when influencer Alix Earle wore skinny jeans, casting doubt on whether the trend was truly dead. But since then, more influencers and brands have moved toward baggy.
“All it takes is one influential person wearing something to make it a trend,” Rintel said. “But it also can sometimes just take one person or one mocking TikTok to kill a trend.”
