Y2K Pants

Not every wide leg in the 2000s was denim. The decade had parachute pants from rave, leather from the Strip, plaid from the bedroom and nylon from the skate shop, and it wore all of them the same way: low, loose, dragging. Y2K Pants gathers nine of them, the non-denim half of the baggy silhouette.

Parachute Pants — Cargo Volume in Black, Beige and Khaki

The parachute pant borrows its name and proportions from actual canopy fabric: light, gathered at the ankle, enormous in between. The Black Parachute Pants keep a cleaner everyday cut; the Beige Parachute Pants load on cargo pockets; the Khaki Parachute Pants go deep olive, the genuine field tone. This is the cyber Y2K and techwear trouser, the one that belongs with a shield lens, a sling bag and a chrome chain, and the one rave culture wore before streetwear borrowed it.

Baggy Y2K Pants — Leather, Zip Harness and Leopard

The Leather Baggy Pants cut matte black leather wide, the opposite of every fitted leather trouser, the Sunset Strip in 2004. The Zip Baggy Pants add harness straps at the knee, hardware below the waist, the techwear-meets-nu-metal pair. The Leopard Baggy Pants print leopard in a muted tone, the quiet version of the loudest pattern in the store. Worn with a cropped top and a studded belt, these three are the McBling and goth answer to the baggy jean.

Graphic and Plaid — Skeleton Bones, Grunge Splatter and Off-Duty Tartan

The Skeleton Pants trace bones down both legs, the mall-goth motif that runs through the store's hoodies carried onto the trouser. The Grunge Pants are patched and splattered by hand, denim-adjacent and deliberately wrecked. The Plaid Pants are cut like off-duty pyjamas, the tartan trouser that crossed from the bedroom to the mall around 2003 and stayed. Three pants, three subcultures, one silhouette.

How the 2000s Wore Pants — Dragging, Belted, Pocketed

Hem on the floor or bunched over the shoe, never cropped. Waistband low with a belt in the gap, even on a drawstring pair. Parachute and cargo pants carried everything in their pockets, which is why the decade stopped carrying bags for a while. On top, short: a baby tee, a cropped hoodie, a tank, so the volume below reads. Leather and leopard went with black on black and a chain; parachute went with a track jacket and sport sunglasses; skeleton and plaid went with a band tee and a spiked bracelet.

Why the Wide Leg Defined Y2K — From Rave Parachutes to JNCO

The 2000s inherited two wide legs: the parachute pant from 1990s rave and the enormous denim leg from JNCO and the skate park. Both said the same thing, that the body underneath did not matter and the silhouette did. Leather, plaid and leopard were added by the glam and goth corridors of the same mall. Twenty years of slim trousers made the wide leg radical again, and a Y2K pant today is the quickest way to change an outline from the waist down.