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Every generation gets the denim scandal it deserves.
Millennials had super low-rise cuts that exposed your bedazzled thong. Gen X jeans were so baggy, they slid off your butt when you walked.
And Gen Z? They’ve stopped buttoning their pants altogether.
Welcome to the era of “foldover jeans,” a pile of pants from teen-obsessed stores like Hollister and Edikted that leave the front purposefully undone — and leave onlookers thinking, Uh… did you forget to zip your pants?
The jeans are named for the sliver of folded fabric sewn down at the waist, which is often printed like underwear with tiny flowers or stripes to give the illusion of a totally open fly.
Abdominally blessed celebs like Addison Rae and Doja Cat began the trend in 2022 by unzipping their “regular” pants and rolling down the waistbands.
But now, stores across the cash spectrum have their own deliberate take on the trend, ranging from $35 pairs at Fashion Nova to $268 at AGOLDE. This week, the online luxury palace Net-a-Porter debuted a pair of purposefully unzipped jeans from the Japanese high fashion label Sacai for $1,210.
“It drives me up the wall,” moaned Lisa Alvarez, a Queens mom to a 25-year-old daughter and 16-year-old stepdaughter, both of whom wear $35 pairs of the panty-baring pants from Fashion Nova. “Every time they come downstairs, I want to go, ‘Zip up your pants, babe.’”
“No. No. No,” sighed Melissa Dunne, a Chelsea native who now lives in Palm Beach with her family, including a 14-year-old daughter who wants to sport the look. “Why do your pants need to be falling off? Come on.”
“Each of these photos looks like the person is on their way to or from the bathroom,” added a Redditor on the popular Female Fashion Advice thread.
But when it comes to the look, cash is dropping faster than fake zippers.
A sales associate at Hollister on 34th St. in Manhattan confirmed the $60 fold-over styles are “totally gone” from the sales floor, but often restock due to constant demand. Nordstrom can’t keep its $279 fold-over jeans from the Spanish line Desigual in stock. Edikted in Soho is likewise running low.
The demand for low flies is so high, says Duke University student Sofia Yassinger, that belly-baring students are buying baggy denim from the upscale label Still Here in a larger sizes, then sewing the waistbands down themselves to emulate the trend.
“They just want to look sexy,” she explained, evoking the writer Erica Jong’s feminist idea of “the zipless f**k,” an uninhibited sexual encounter as defined in her 1973 book “Fear of Flying.” Indeed, many of these pants lack zippers at all, relying instead on 1-2 undone buttons to do the job.
Still, even the haters concede the trend is just part of an adolescent rite of passage.
“I hate it,” said Alvarez, the Queens mom. “But look, I used to wear sweatpants that said ‘Juicy’ on the butt. In rhinestones! And I thought I looked cool and sexy. So, like, who am I to judge?”
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