After the barrel jean, denim settles into the relaxed straight leg

Denim has been one of fashion's most reliable categories over the past few years, carried by a shopper who wants comfort first and has spent several seasons moving away from the skinny jean towards looser shapes, the wide leg, the baggy fit and, most recently, the curved barrel jean that became the season's most popular silhouette. With the fashion month Spring/Summer 2027 shows now complete, the question for the industry is what replaces the barrel, and the runway's answer is not a more dramatic shape but a quieter one: the relaxed, full-length straight jean, worn with a blazer.

That answer comes from The Data Fashion Brief's analysis of the Paris and New York collections, and it is backed by what shoppers are already searching for, where the straight jean is now searched about three times as often as the barrel and is growing faster.

Paris treats denim as a wardrobe basic

Denim appeared in 4 percent of every look shown in Paris, but those looks were spread across 63 percent of the houses analysed, which makes it light in volume and wide in reach. Every one of those looks carried exactly one denim piece, so there was no denim-on-denim anywhere in Paris, and denim was the main fabric of only 18 looks, seven of them at Stella McCartney. Everywhere else, the jean was a supporting piece.

What it was, overwhelmingly, was the jean itself. Trousers accounted for 75 percent of the denim pieces, and of those, straight leg and wide leg were the top shapes, with the straight leg concentrated at Maison Margiela, Stella McCartney and Tom Ford. The fit was relaxed on 77 percent of the pieces, while there was no sign of a skinny revival, with a single skinny jean in the whole of Paris, at Tom Ford. Mid-wash led the colour story with 55 percent, mostly at Balenciaga and Stella McCartney, followed by indigo, mostly Tom Ford and Miu Miu.

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*Methodology: The Data Fashion Brief built an AI-assisted tool that scans every look from the Paris Fashion Week SS27 collections and tags it by garment type, fit, fabric and colour. Each trend is measured two ways: how dominant it is within a single designer's own collection, and how present it is across the whole season. The Paris houses covered: Balenciaga, Balmain, Celine, Chanel, Chloé, Dior, Dries Van Noten, Isabel Marant, Lacoste, Lanvin, Loewe, Maison Margiela, Miu Miu, Stella McCartney, Tom Ford and Valentino, 997 looks in total. The New York houses covered: Altuzarra, Calvin Klein, Carolina Herrera, Coach, Conner Ives, Cult Gaia, Khaite, Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, Thom Browne, Tommy Hilfiger, Tory Burch and Ulla Johnson. Search data comes from Google Trends, worldwide, October 2025 to October 2026, compared with the preceding year.

The styling is where the barrel's successor becomes clear. Wool suiting appears in 23 percent of the denim looks and leather in 14 percent, so the blazer worn with jeans is the formula, especially at Tom Ford and Maison Margiela, and the data shows mid-wash sitting on straight trousers about nine times more often than chance would predict. Tom Ford put indigo jeans under blazers alongside pinstripe jeans, white jeans and denim shorts. Balenciaga showed almost entirely mid-wash jeans with shirts and T-shirts, five wide leg and three straight, and Stella McCartney led on volume with denim in 16 percent of its looks, mostly straight jeans alongside a denim jacket, a denim shirt and palm-printed white jeans.

The houses doing something newer with denim were the exceptions rather than the rule. Maison Margiela, with denim in 14 percent of its looks, showed three denim jackets, a denim maxi skirt and charcoal denim, the only house in Paris to use it, while Miu Miu showed lace-up jeans, a lace-up denim pinafore and crinkled denim skirts, the only denim in the season with a finish other than matte. Chanel paired a denim corset with a tulle skirt, and Stella McCartney's printed and patchworked jeans carried most of the season's surface decoration.

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New York points to the same relaxed trouser

New York had already pointed the same way earlier in the season. Denim appeared in 38 percent of the shows analysed, most present at Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Conner Ives and Thom Browne, with the relaxed denim trouser the piece that connects it to Paris. Paris spread denim across more of its houses, 63 percent against New York's 38 percent, but both cities describe the same shift: denim has moved from statement to staple, present across a large share of collections without any single house turning it into a season-defining look, and the jean doing that work is relaxed rather than skinny.

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Retailers are selling fit, not a single shape

The commercial picture explains why designers are treating denim as a basic, and it is consistent across several of the largest denim sellers rather than resting on any one of them.

The Gap brand posted comparable sales growth of 10 percent in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, its eleventh consecutive quarter of positive comparable sales, with management naming denim among its destination categories, while Old Navy, which describes itself as the third largest denim brand in the United States, said it would build on newer silhouettes such as low rise and baggy in the second half.

Levi Strauss & Co. raised its full-year outlook in July after second quarter revenue rose 8 percent, pointing to looser fits among its drivers. At American Eagle, where comparable sales at the brand fell 1 percent in the second quarter, the company attributed the decline partly to rebalancing its women's denim inventory, while reporting a good response to new women's fits including a wide-leg straight and a low rise.

None of these companies is selling one silhouette. The growth is coming from a wider family of fits, baggy, wide, straight, low rise and bootcut sold alongside each other, which reflects how the customer now shops for denim: less as a trend purchase and more as a search for the pair that fits and is comfortable to wear every day.

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What shoppers are searching for

Search data adds a nuance the runway alone does not show, which is that the barrel is maturing rather than fading. Worldwide search interest in "barrel jeans" peaked in April and has since settled at less than half that peak, but it has stayed higher than the same week a year earlier in every week of the past year, and over the past two months it has run at almost double last year's level. The barrel is no longer accelerating, but the shoppers who discovered it have not left it.

Where the runway and search do line up is on the straight leg. Among the most searched jeans queries worldwide over the past year, "straight jeans" scores about three times higher than "barrel jeans" on the same scale, and the straight-leg queries are also among the fastest growing, with "straight jeans" up 130 percent, "straight leg jeans" up 150 percent and "straight fit jeans" up 180 percent against the previous period, ahead of the barrel's 120 percent.

The skinny jean, meanwhile, has not translated into a lasting return. Search interest jumped sharply in the spring, but by early October it had fallen back to last year's level, which matches the single skinny jean on the Paris runway.

The same list of top searches shows what shoppers are looking for beyond the shape. The most searched jeans query of the past year was "men's jeans", which also grew the fastest of any query on the list, up 700 percent against the previous period, a reminder that the denim conversation is not only a womenswear one.

On colour, "black jeans" and "blue jeans" are the most searched after it, but the faster growth sits in lighter and warmer shades, with "white jeans" up 70 percent, "light blue jeans" up 80 percent and "brown jeans" up 110 percent, which lines up with the mid-wash and white denim that Paris put on its runways. The decline is concentrated in the shapes of earlier cycles, with "mom jeans" down 10 percent and "flared jeans" down 20 percent.

Brand searches point the same way as the retail results. "Levi's jeans" and "Calvin Klein jeans" are both up 200 percent, "Gap jeans" up 140 percent, and "Old Navy" and "H&M" up 120 percent each, while "Zara jeans" rose a more modest 20 percent. The brands whose searches grew fastest are largely the heritage denim names, which suggests that for a shopper looking for the right pair, a recognised fit from a known denim label carries more weight than a new silhouette.

That is the same instinct the Paris runway reflects, where 77 percent of denim pieces were cut relaxed and the straight leg outgrew the wide leg three to one: a customer who has already made the straight jean the most searched silhouette, and designers who are now putting it under a blazer.

What this means for brands and retailers

The barrel jean is not disappearing, search interest is still running ahead of last year and retailers are still selling it within broader fit families, but the runway signal for Spring/Summer 2027 is that the next jean is less extreme rather than more: relaxed, full length, straight or gently wide, mid-wash or indigo, and styled with tailoring rather than worn as denim-on-denim. For brands, the opportunity sits in fit range and wearability, and for retailers it points to assortments built around the straight leg as a core, with house specific details, lacing, charcoal washes, prints, even embroidery as the points of difference.

The real test comes when the Spring/Summer 2027 collections reach stores next year, and in the meantime the holiday trading season will show whether the demand behind looser, straighter fits is holding as the barrel matures.

Sources:
-Gap Inc. second quarter fiscal 2026 results, August 27, 2026
-Levi Strauss & Co. second quarter results (Nasdaq), CNBC, July 8, 2026
-Yahoo Finance, AEO Q2 2026 call summary, Modern Retail, September 10, 2026.