Historically speaking, in the 2000s there was a widespread outbreak of a disease that touched everyone’s wardrobes. It was an epidemic. Men, women, celebrities, no one was immune. The fast-spreading virus started on the catwalk, it spread to shops like Miss Sixty and Jane Norman, and it came in waves each season. Against some designer’s best efforts, there was no penicillin or reprise it spread until a cure, called skinny black jeans, was found. Let’s take a stroll through memory lane and remember the last heinous plague of bad denim.
1. Diamante Butts
J Lo was a great venerator of the bedazzled bottom.
2. How Low Can You Go
Tara Reid jeans teetered on danger point with their low, low rise
3. Golden Glow
There was a moment, around 2001, when you couldn’t move but come across bootcut jeans badly painted in a metallic sealant. They made a crunchy sound as you walked and were disastrously flaky after a wash.
4. Patch Test
Here we have a classic example of the 2000s take on the 1970s. Part hippie, part Micky Mouse Club, this is what you get when you sew all your jeans together but forget to leave fabric for pockets, a fly and a waistband.
5. Cheeky Features
When Victoria Beckham first tried her hand at fashion design with her line of VB Rock jeans, she was an exalter of embellished posteriors.
6. Pedal Pushers
It’s summer in London, and Kiera Knightly wanted let her calves to meet the world. Natch, she paired her denim capris with a waist-belt and kitten heels.
7. Backstreet's Back, Alright
The perfect look for when you want to impress in the boardroom at 5 and set da club ablaze with your breakdancing moves at 9.
8. All Buttoned Up
For when you can’t decide between casual jeans and a corset you end up with this….
9. Tasting The Rainbow
Banana yellow, letterbox red, cobalt blue – no matter how eye-watering vivid, no colour was off limits.
10. Dark Shadows
Who needs pockets when you can have discoloured shadows instead?
11. The Crossovers
Like a mutilated pair of trackie bottoms, these are neither jeans, nor cargo trousers or sweatpants, but a car crash hybrid of all three.
12. A Star Is Born
Do you remember when everyone thought back pockets were overrated? Kim Cattrall won't take kindly to being reminded.
13. Behind The Seams
There was a hot moment when everyone – you, me, Britney included – wore baggy jeans with a front seam.
14. Cuff Control To Major Tom
Cuffs got a little full of themselves in the Noughties. As the decade went on, they got bigger and more unwieldy. Case in point: Sarah Jessica Parker.
15. Paint Stripper
Ideally, you wanted to turn up to the party looking like you’d borrowed your MSN crush’s jeans for paint-balling while the reality was you'd actually dropped some hard earned pocket money in Urban Outfitters on pre-muddied denim.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.