Well, this will severely cut into your glow stick budget.
JNCO — the brand most commonly linked to the late-’90s fashion trend of extremely wide-legged jeans beloved by ravers, skaters and eventually, Juggalos — is attempting a comeback.
And if you pine for the days when your pant legs had such a large circumference that you appeared to be wearing a prairie skirt from afar, be forewarned that a single pair will cost you a whole lot of money. And no, we’re not just jerking your wallet chain.
Last week, JNCO relaunched with eight styles that cost $130 to $250. And while the prices may make you want to clutch your candy necklace, there is a method behind this madness.
Milo Revah, who founded JNCO with his brother Jacques Yaakov Revah in 1985, released the brand’s licensing to the Chinese company Guotai Litian Group in 2014, according to Racked. Mixmag, a British electronic dance and clubbing magazine that wrote a feature about JNCO’s recent relaunch, reports that when Guotai Litian Group acquired the license, the quality of the pants went down.
Consumers apparently noticed the difference, and vintage JNCOS became a “hot commodity.” While the original jeans cost somewhere between $65 to $75, according to a 1997 catalog listing Jezebel dug up, people started selling them on eBay for “hundreds of dollars.”
A 2015 BuzzFeed article found several pairs of JNCO pants being sold on eBay for $100 to $240, so there is some support for this claim.
If you check eBay now for JNCO jeans, prices vary. Some pairs are as inexpensive as $35, though it’s unclear if the jeans were manufactured before or after 2014.
When The Cut was trying to wrap its mind around the concept of low-rise jeans coming back in fashion in 2018, trend forecasters and fashion insiders told the site that Gen-Zers are trying “to capture the trashy Y2K mood.” They claimed these young fashion consumers were trying to be ironic and pointed to Instagram accounts such as @y2ktrashy or @paris2000s, which have tens of thousands of followers, as evidence.
So, there you have it: JNCO jeans are back, they’re pricy as hell, and sellers seem to think they can get away with it.
Now excuse us while we dig through our childhood closets and open up a few eBay stores.