As best I can tell from my rudimentary knowledge of sartorial paleontology, the trajectory of the Mom Jean goes like this:

In the late 1970s earl 1980s, you had your sleek, high-waisted silhouette, aided by the blend of polyester into the denim. This was a tricky look, generally thought to be best-suited to the long and lean. Think Brooke Shields in her Calvins.

By the 80s, poly-blends felt dated, and waist-lines dropped a bit (failed experiments in pleating and strange washes were rampant, but we’re sticking to the basics here). By the 90s, the snugness relaxed, perhaps in response to the influence of grunge (and high fructose corn syrup?).

What we are left with is the Mom Jean: a garment of no determinable silhouette, often, but not always, fraught with details like pleats and trouser pockets. It has the unholy power to make even the shapeliest of posteriors into bulky, amorphous blobs, and the leanest of them into the long, flat ass of defeat.

And now you can buy them at Top Shop for $80!
 

This one runs you $100
 
I laugh, but there will be a million Brooklyn girls sporting these, looking somehow lovely. It’s an anomaly prevalent in young Brooklyn I like to call “uglimmunity,” where a girl is so conventionally attractive, she can literally wear the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen, and will somehow appear irreverently chic.

But I, as a mere mortal, do not possess the powers to rock the Mom Jeans, especially not the Mom Jeans never even intended for moms to wear. No, these Valkyries of fashion will appropriate the ceremonial garb of moms simply because they can.