Waistbands Reached the Sternum for Spring 2024

Against all odds, including a wave of Y2K influences, several directional designers showed some of the highest-waisted pants in recent runway history. For them, low-rise doesn’t seem to be apart of the equation for now.

At Rick Owens, the show opened with radical flared pants featuring a very high, cinched waist, “giving an appearance of endless legs not seen since the modeling heydays of Nadja Auermann,” quipped WWD international editor Miles Socha.

Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson focused on a similar silhouette with jeans pavéd in tiny crystals that almost reached the rib cage. “Stretching out the proportion,” the designer explained postshow. The runway set, with its towering fountain sculptures by Lynda Benglis, reinforced this idea.

Elsewhere, tucked-in shirts emphasized hiked-up waists at Officine Générale, JordanLuca and Dries van Noten, but it was Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons who took the styling trick to extremes with shirts that had extra-wide, extra-long sleeves, adding to the illusion of a shortened torso.

Out-of-the-box waist treatments also aided in keeping baggy pants from dipping below the navel.

At Juun.J, jackets were inverted and tied at the waist, exaggerating the hip to hourglass proportions. A swath of olive green fabric did the same at Burc Akyol, while Luca Magliano, winner of the LVMH Karl Lagerfeld Special Jury Prize for 2023, furthered his rough-hewn, downbeat aesthetic with dangling hook and bar closures and layered belts.

And while full-volume legs were certainly the dominating pant shape for spring, Anthony Vaccarello continued to push for skinny versions done in black grain de poudre at Saint Laurent. These had waists so tight they “strangled the hips of his young models as they lurched forward on glossy, high-heeled boots,” observed Socha.

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