“Denim is having a moment,” Bryant University professor of marketing Sharmin Attaran told Yahoo Finance. “Retailers are not … following it, but they’re amplifying it.”<\/p>\n
This summer, Sydney Sweeney’s ad campaign for American Eagle touched off a controversy with its key slogan \u2014 “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans<\/a>” \u2014 and garnered 40 billion impressions in just six weeks. In the company’s latest earnings report<\/a>, results beat forecasts across the board.<\/p>\n “Let me be very clear, Sydney Sweeney sells great jeans,” American Eagle CEO Jay Schottenstein told investors on an earnings call. Schottenstein said the campaign led to a quarter of “record-breaking new customer acquisition and brand awareness, cutting across age demographics and genders.”<\/p>\n American Eagle stock rose nearly 40% after the results.<\/p>\n Or take the Gap campaign<\/a> that launched two weeks ago. It leans into millennial nostalgia with the girl pop group Katseye dancing to the 2003 song “Milkshake.” The spot has over 16 million views on YouTube.<\/p>\n In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Gap CEO Richard Dickson said the campaign had received a “record-breaking” response, adding that it’s “not a cultural conversation, it is a cultural takeover” as fashion meets entertainment.<\/p>\n “[Gap is] killing it, going back to their roots of embracing dance, and that’s what we knew them for,” H2 Marketing Group founder and CEO Hillary Herskowitz said.<\/p>\n The world of apparel retail is always subject to shifting tastes and new trends.<\/p>\n The recent surge in denim is no exception.<\/p>\n “This a different, slower time, and that really reset expectations for comfort now that we’re back in offices and back to our lives, classroom, social spaces,” Attaran said. “Denim returning is a way to kind of look put together.”<\/p>\n The recent resurgence of jeans has also seen wider, fuller cuts emerge as consumers move away from the skinny jean fad that defined the pre-pandemic era.<\/p>\n “If anybody thought denim was dead because stretchy pants made us all too lazy and comfortable, they’re wrong. It’s full force. It’s back,” SW Retail Advisors president Stacey Widlitz told Yahoo Finance.<\/p>\n Story Continues <\/p>\n The flip side is that athleisure is in retreat as a growth area in the apparel world. This reversal is most clearly seen in Lululemon (LULU<\/a>) stock, which fell nearly 20% on Friday after the company cut its annual profit outlook<\/a>. With Friday’s decline, Lululemon stock was trading at a six-year low.<\/p>\n On a call with investors, Gap CEO Dickson noted strength in baggy jeans alongside other “easy pull-on styles,” essentially the opposite of skinny jeans.<\/p>\n Kohl’s interim CEO Michael Bender called the development in denim “interesting,” with “anything baggy, wide leg, those types of features in denim … showing strength.”<\/p>\n Target (TGT<\/a>) reported same-store sales growth for women’s denim of 28% in its latest quarter. Executive vice president Richard Gomez told investors this growth was “driven by new styles, new silhouettes, new washes.” Gomez added that the company remains focused on delivering “newness at an affordable price.”<\/p>\n This increasing demand for denim has seen pricing for wider, fuller cuts outpace skinnier jeans. In a note to clients, Dana Telsey of Telsey Advisory Group wrote that skinny jeans, which typically cost around $70 per pair, are more likely to be marked at a steeper discount than barrel, baggy, or low-rise jeans, which cost closer to $90 per pair.<\/p>\n Over the next several years, the US denim jeans market alone is expected to grow by mid-single digits, Telsey said. That’s compared to the low-single-digit growth from 2019 to 2024, when total sales ranged from $20 billion to $22 billion.<\/p>\n Levi Strauss CFO Harmit Singh told a Goldman Sachs conference this week that the denim market is a $100 billion global opportunity. The company has a long-term target of reaching $10 billion in annual sales. In its most recent quarter, sales totaled $1.45 billion.<\/p>\n As part of this focus, Singh said Levi’s amplified its efforts to be not just a purveyor of jeans, but a denim lifestyle.<\/p>\n “We are known for denim bottoms. Let’s be known for denim shirts,” Singh said.<\/p>\n “The … world is becoming a lot more casual, right?” Singh added. “And denim is a key driver of that casualization phase.”<\/p>\n Brooke DiPalma is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @BrookeDiPalma<\/a> or email her at bdipalma@yahoofinance.com.<\/p>\n Billboards of actress Sydney Sweeney are seen outside an American Eagle store on Aug. 1 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images) \u00b7 Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images <\/p>\n
A construction worker walks next to a poster of Beyonc\u00e9’s Levi’s campaign on Oct. 23, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Michael Blackshire\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) \u00b7 Michael Blackshire via Getty Images <\/p>\n