Despair: World mourns as the Four Lads throw out their skinny jeans

All is not as it seems at the Birmingham Bullring shopping centre. Where four men once stood – resplendent in skintight polyester and denim-elastane blends – we now see an altogether different scene. The same men have returned, but this time they’ve swapped their taut trousers for roomier models. Poky pinstripes are replaced by slouchy straight legs, compact jeggings by capacious cargos – there’s not even a single ankle in sight. Up top, things are looking similarly sizeable, as nipple-bearing polos and constricting sleeves are exchanged for outsize hoodies and tees. These are the Four Lads in Jeans, and they have bent to society’s warped prejudices. They have burnt the Library of Alexandria. A rich text is lost.

While we’d all love to hit the shops on someone else’s dime, what does this switch up actually say about the way people are dressing now? In 2024, the four lads bowing to society’s pressure makes a lot of sense. The outfits that they wore in 2019 read as dated even then, and what they have on now rings truer to how TikTok often proposes the majority of people should dress. What’s even more interesting, though, is that this new development comes during a freshly revitalised debate in fashion around the return of skinny jeans. While they’ve been resurfacing on runways like Aaron Esh and Miu Miu, maybe this is more evidence that the general public just isn’t ready for them yet? Having said that, we all know fashion loves a contrarian stance (that’s ultimately how you push the envelope), so now that the Four Horsemen of Skinny Jeans have finally switched to straight, that’s probably a sign that a fully fledged revival actually is on the horizon: the trend cycle has made yet another orbit around the sun, and it’s just sweeping the lads up now, before it ultimately moves on. Either way, we salute their fashion exploration, and the spoils it may bring them. Godspeed, Four Lads in Jeans.