I’m Obsessed With Bad Bunny’s Dad Jeans at the Grammys

During last night’s Grammys, I wasn’t transfixed by Harry Styles’s bedazzled Harlequin jumpsuit with tattoo-revealing décolletage nor was I charmed by Jack Antonoff’s skinny-tie-Buddy-Holly get-up. The red carpet parade all seemed too flashy, too attention seeking, too much. Instead, the man who really stole my heart was Bad Bunny, who wore the simplest of outfits while performing songs from his Grammy-nominated album Un Verano Sin Ti: a T-shirt and jeans. 

There was something incredible about his look, specifically the high-rise, snug stovepipe pants. They looked familiar, like they belonged to dorky Jerry Seinfeld, a high-fiving Mitt Romney, and definitely someone’s father. The denim was uncharacteristically simple for Bad Bunny, someone who accessorized 2021’s Grammys look with an oddball sunflower to the Grammys and takes selfies in a crop top. “This time around he wanted casual and comfort,” his stylist Storm Pablo wrote to Vogue over email. According to Pablo, Bad Bunny requested all of the pieces himself: the T-shirt was Uniqlo 1990 and the pants were Levi’s 501s.

This performance look—specifically the cut of the jeans—felt radical in a place where people dress to make headlines. Bad Bunny’s normcore jeans stood out against the sea of ballgowns and sequins. Not just because they were simple; in fact, dad jeans are one of the most divisive-yet-banal silhouettes on the internet. There are forums dedicated to finding the perfect dad jeans and others where users commiserate, “I accidentally bought dad jeans online and can’t return them now.” When I search for the jeans, many of the reviews—by welders, everyday dudes, their wives—use the word “comfortable”, which is the same reason why Bad Bunny chose them in the first place. 

And while Bad Bunny’s pants seem rare these days, the comfortable jeans were once the pant du jour at awards shows back in the ’80s and the ’90s. They were practically an invasive species on the red carpet. Nostalgic Instagram accounts like @nightopenings chronicle the hiked-up hunks who wore the style. Kevin Bacon sported a lightwash pair with a tucked-in V-neck white T-shirt at the Apollo 13 premiere; Chevy Chase wore his sandblasted hip-hugging iteration with a denim shirt at the Invisible Man; and a dignified George Lucas chose a button-up version to the premiere of The Rock. These images tap into a time when people were less achingly put-together, more self-styled, and simply more comfortable. 

The pants also made a bit of a comeback this past menswear season. Martine Rose, who often taps into self-aware cheekiness and London nostalgia, released a pair of snug, chiseled, thick jeans this past season. Y/Project’s Glenn Martens took the waistline a bit higher, and made a pair out of dark denim with billowing, almost ruffled legs.