Fall fashion is all about the '80s, with leggings and bubble skirts accosting women's style everywhere.
Even jeans, a wardrobe staple, are experiencing a double-decade throwback. But this time, when denim goes gray, it's not of the stonewashed variety.
"Gray is just a very fresh, very edgy color right now," said Clarissa Cruz, People magazine's associate editor of fashion.
Cruz started seeing gray denim on "those early-adapting Brits" Sienna Miller and Kate Moss in the fall, and has since seen it catch on with celebs on this side of the pond. Nicole Richie, Amerie, Mischa Barton are just a few of the twigs seen in tight gray.
It's one way to adapt the rocker-chic look happening in fashion, Cruz said.
"It's the safe girl's route to being edgy," she said.
"Gray is the new blue," said Racheallee Lacek, owner of Torque Denim on the South Side. "It's so different and unique."
Lacek said that when she was buying the store's fall line last month, slim-cut, gray jeans were everywhere.
Now, customers are starting to ask for them.
"I definitely see people purchasing it and wanting it," she said.
Torque is carrying mostly skinny and straight-leg styles from labels such as J & Company Jeans and Vintage Rebel.
Shadyside's e.b. Pepper is stocking gray denim from J. Brand Jeans, Tag Jeans and Citizens for Humanity for fall. And instead of just the trendy, skinny jean, the store is carrying a variety of styles, from cropped lengths to a regular bootcut to a skinnier silhouette.
"It's a new look, just something different that goes with everything," sales associate Ashley Buckner said.
Buckner said the store probably will stock darker grays as fall and winter set in.
Although the style was hot in the '80s, style and color variations would make it hard to transition a pair of vintage gray jeans into today's wardrobe, said Rachel Vallozzi, owner of Kharisma Vintage Fashions on the North Side.
"By the time trends come back around, they are always altered," Vallozzi said. "For example, the gray denim from the '80s was high-waisted, and usually an unattractive color of gray. (With) the gray denim now, the cuts will be more flattering to bodies of 2006."
Vallozzi re-works vintage clothes for today's customers, but said jeans are especially hard to reconfigure.
"Every time they go for throwback styles, they're altered so much that it's hard to use actual vintage jeans," she said.
Today's gray jeans are more blue-gray, not the acid-washed or heavy stonewash of 20 years ago, Vallozzi said.
Cruz said today's gray is useful and chic.
"It's a bit more casual than black, but dressier than blue," she said. "It's perfect for that gray area."
