What's the Difference Between Slim Fit and Skinny Fit Jeans?
Pant shopping always felt more complicated than finding my size. I used to stare at shelves of pants, perplexed by labels like slim fit and skinny fit. I figured fashionable people knew the difference between slim and skinny. Fashionable I was not.
At some point, I suspected something was wrong with the labels. Some slim pants I tried on fit like skinny jeans. Some skinny pants were baggier than other slim jeans.
I don't like fuzzy marketing lingo. I'm a scientist. I like numbers. That's why my partner and I are working on turning pant shopping into a science.
Why guess what makes slim fit and skinny fit different when we could gather data? We personally measured over a thousand pairs of jeans to find out what makes slim fit different from skinny fit. Over the past few weeks, we crunched the numbers.
What did we learn? The fashion industry doesn't have a clue what skinny fit and slim fit mean. Other blog posts we read claimed that skinny pants are narrower than slim pants. We didn't quite find that. Here's what we learned instead:
On average, skinny fit is narrower than slim fit
There isn’t a standard skinny jean or standard slim pant. One brand’s skinny fit might be wider than another brand’s slim fit
Within a brand, though, skinny fit is always narrower than slim fit
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Skinny Fit is Narrower than Slim Fit...on Average
Skinny fit jeans are supposed to hug your body around the hips and legs. In contrast, slim jeans are supposed to fit close to your hips and legs but are not skin tight. In other words, skinny should be narrower than slim.
On average, this is true. The average skinny jean is narrower than the average slim pant. How do we know? We averaged our slim pants and skinny jeans measurements. Below, we drew an average men's slim jean in blue atop a black outline of a men's skinny jean, both in size 32.
Average Slim Fit vs — Average Skinny Fit
Surprisingly, they look very similar. The waistbands are nearly identical — there’s only a 1% difference on average between them. The same holds for the thighs — 5% smaller on the skinny fit — and hips — 7% smaller on the skinny fit.
We found the biggest difference is the leg opening. The average skinny jean has 13% less room in the leg opening than the average slim.
True, on average a skinny pant is narrower than a slim jean. The problem is: you never buy an average skinny jean or slim jean. You buy jeans from one brand that makes their own skinny fit and slim fit. This makes finding a slim fit or skinny fit pant that works best for you challenging.
Skinny Jeans aren't Always Narrower than Slim Pants
We found that slim fit and skinny fit don’t have one meaning across all brands. If you take a random skinny pant and a random slim pant, the skinny is not always narrower than the slim.
Check out Kato's Needle Skinny vs Joe's Jeans Men's Slim:
Kato "Needle" Skinny 4-way Stretch vs — Joe's Jeans Men's Slim
The Kato skinny fit is smaller around the hip than Joe’s slim fit, as expected. The real surprise is in the thighs: the Kato skinny fit is an inch and a half bigger than Joe’s slim fit.
This is why shoppers can’t figure out what makes a slim jean “slim” and a skinny jean “skinny”. A skinny jean in one brand might be bigger than a slim pant in another.
That’s not to say there isn’t a difference between slim fit and skinny fit. It’s true that there isn’t a standard skinny jean or a standard slim pant. Instead, we can only compare skinny fit and slim fit within a brand.
Slim Fit vs Skinny Fit within a Brand
1. Skinny Fit is Never Wider than Slim Fit
A brand's slim pant is never narrower than their own skinny jean. This is good news for you as a shopper. Say you like Levi's 510 Skinny Fit. It hugs your legs like a skinny jean should but doesn't feel tight. With complete confidence, you can buy the Levi's 511 Slim Fit knowing
- The slim fit won't fit tighter anywhere than the skinny fit
- The slim fit will be wider than the skinny fit somewhere on the pant
What does "somewhere" mean? It depends!
2. Slim Pants are Sometimes as Skinny as Skinny Jeans
Slim jeans are never narrower than skinny jeans made by the same brand. That doesn't mean a slim pant can't be as narrow as a skinny jean in some places.
Take Kato, an upper end selvedge denim brand. Here's their "Pen" Slim in blue on top of their "Needle" Skinny.
Kato "Pen" Slim 4-Way Stretch vs — Kato "Needle" Skinny 4-way Stretch
Sure, Kato's slim is never narrower than Kato's skinny. When we measured the thighs, though, we found they were exactly the same.
Like Kato, Goodfellow & Co's Slim Fit is just as narrow as their Skinny Fit in some spots. Here's an overlay of the Goodfellow & Co Slim vs Skinny:
Goodfellow & Co Slim vs — Goodfellow & Co Skinny
Unlike Kato, Goodfellow & Co's Slim Fit is bigger in the thighs than their Skinny Fit. However, we found that the hips on both are identical.
On the other hand, some brands make slim fit pants that are always bigger than their skinny fit. Checkout Levi's 510 Skinny Fit vs Levi's 511 Slim Fit.
Levi's 511 Slim Fit vs — Levi's 510 Skinny Fit
Unlike Kato or Goodfellow, Levi's 511 is wider than Levi's 510 everywhere.
3. Skinny Jeans are not Tighter than Slim Jeans around the Waist
Readers have told us they feel like skinny jeans are tighter than slim jeans in the waistband. Our numbers disagree.
On average, skinny jeans have the same waistband as slim jeans. For a size 32, we measured skinny jeans to have an average waistband of 33.3". We measured 33.5" for the average slim jean waistband.
Skinny jeans and slim pants also had similar waistbands within a brand. Slim fit jeans and skinny fit jeans had the same waistband, up to a difference of a quarter inch.
The notable exception is Levi’s. Their 510 Skinny Fit has an inch smaller waistband than the 511 Slim Fit. However, the rise — where the pants sit on your belly — is higher on the 510s vs 511s. That means that the raw waistband measurement needs to be smaller to fit the same body that the 511 fits.
This is a good thing for customers. Within a brand, the waistband should fit in the same size in a brand’s skinny fit and slim fit. That makes shopping within a brand simpler.
4. Slim Jeans can be just as Stretchy as Skinny Jeans
Skinny jeans are stretchy, but that doesn't mean slim jeans aren't. Some slim jeans are just as narrow as skinny jeans. Those slim jeans need to stretch like a skinny jean. Otherwise, they’d be too tight.
How stretchy are slim jeans? It depends on the brand. Take Joe's Jeans Men's Slim: they have up to a 7% blend of elasterell-p and elastane, depending on the colorway.
Here's the surprising twist: skinny jeans can be as rigid as some slim jeans. Again, it depends on the brand. Naked & Famous, for example, makes their Super Guy Skinny Fit jeans with 100% cotton. Cotton doesn't stretch.
5. There are More Leg Cuts of Slim Pants
There's two main parts of a pair of pants:
- The Seat: this is the area around your hips and thighs
- The Leg: this is the area below the thigh, from the knee to leg opening
Pants can have a slim fit or skinny fit but a leg that isn't cut slim or skinny. But, if a pair of pants is slim fit or skinny fit without any other words, then the pant leg is usually tapered. Tapered fit pants are smaller around the leg opening than they are around the knee.
Most men's skinny fit pants are skinny everywhere. Slim fit pants, on the other hand, come in a variety of different types of legs and seats. For example, I've seen slim fit pants that are
- Athletic: the seat has a wider than usual thigh, but fits like that brand's slim jean around the hips and leg.
- Taper: the leg tapers from the knee to an even narrower leg opening than the brand's typical slim jean.
- Straight: the leg doesn't taper. The knee and leg opening are about the same size, but the seat fits like that brand's slim jean.
- Boot Cut: the leg opening is bigger than the knee, but otherwise is like the brand's slim pants.
What's that mean for you as a shopper? It's more likely that you'll find a slim fit pant you'll be happy with if you have a fit problem. Big thighs? Find a brand you like and try their Athletic Slim. Small calves? Try that brand's tapered slim.
The Biggest Difference: the Leg Opening
Yes, every brand makes slim and skinny pants with a different shape. Still, there's one thing that's true about skinny jeans and slim pants across all brands. The leg opening on skinny fit pants is smaller than slim pants.
Every skinny fit pant from big brands we measured had a smaller leg opening than every slim pant. The biggest skinny fit leg opening we measured was 13" on a size 32, and the smallest slim was 13.25"
There's one noteworthy exception: pants from short men's brands. Brands for short men make very small leg openings on all their pants.
Short men have smaller legs, on average, compared to men of average height. These brands redesigned their clothing so that it doesn't look baggy or long on short men. What that means is their slim pant leg openings are smaller than normal skinny jeans. For example, Under 510's Bruce Slim Jeans have a 12.25" leg opening. For comparison, the very skinny Uniqlo Ultra Stretch Jeans have a 12.5" leg opening.
Buyer beware: department stores relabel jeans based on leg opening. For example, Nordstrom changed Acne studio's slim fit jean to a skinny jean on their website. Why? The Acne studios slim fit leg opening is smaller than the leg opening on most slim jeans.
Should you Buy Slim Pants or Skinny Jeans?
It depends on the brand!
It's more important to find a brand that's making pants that you don't feel are tight or baggy on you. Every brand makes a unique slim fit and skinny fit. That means we can't give you a definite answer.
The best way to know what's right for you is to compare how pants with different labels fit in each brand.
How do you do that? Be on the lookout in the upcoming weeks for our pant comparison tool. It'll let you pick two pairs of pants and see how one fits versus the other. Leave your email below to be the first to know when it launches.
