MEMORIES:

Sitting low on the hips and exposing belly buttons everywhere, hip huggers were the pants to be seen in during the crazy 60s when the less you wore, the hipper you were.

 

Hip hugger pants only came up to the hips instead of the waist. The cut accentuated the curve of the hips, but the look wasn’t just for girls. Cutting edge rock stars like the Rolling Stones and The Who also wore the low-slung pants. After the halter top came into fashion to expose the top of the body, hip huggers followed to expose the lower half. The 60s were the start of cutting-edge fashion focusing on what the wearer wasn’t wearing – the more skin exposed, the better. New materials and colors enabled the styles to look good and fit well.

 

Both men and women paired the hip huggers with a wide belt that helped keep them up. The pants legs were often flared, but any style could be called a hip hugger as long as the waistband hung low. The style found a resurgence in the 90’s when designer Alexander McQueen took the look to the extreme. His “bum pants” sat so low on the hips that the top of the buttocks were exposed. Once the look for plumbers checking out the pipes under the sink, the style was now seen on girls across the country.