Key takeaways:Â
- Pacsun launched the Kaia Jean, an ultra-low-rise baggy denim fit, for Back-to-School 2026.
- Google Trends search interest in low rise jeans reached a five-year high in April 2026.
Pacsun has introduced the Kaia Jean, an ultra-low-rise baggy silhouette arriving for Back-to-School season, and new search data shows the category it’s entering has been building momentum for years.
The fit builds on the success of Pacsun’s Casey low-rise jaggy Jean, pushing the silhouette further with a 7 ¼-inch rise, wide leg and fitted top block. Richard Cox, Chief Merchandising Officer at Pacsun, said in a statement that the response to Casey made clear there was room to evolve further, and that Kaia delivers a more directional, ultra-low-rise expression of the trend.
Kaia followed an early test launch that exceeded expectations, prompting expanded production, and Pacsun now calls it one of its fastest-growing denim silhouettes heading into back to achool. The brand plans to add washes, cuffed hems, dark rinses, tonal stripe details, and slub fabrications through fall and holiday.
Denim Executives See an Accelerating Cycle
Denim executives describe the broader low-rise shift as accelerating rather than peaking. Tamara Reynolds, Vice President of the Denim Center of Excellence at Catalyst, Lucky Brand’s parent company, told Fast Company that fashion is moving toward more extreme proportions and that her team is increasingly excited about super-low-rise fits. Reynolds traced the trend’s roots to early 2000s style icons like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, saying low-rise denim was central to that era’s look and that the current revival caught on quickly once it resurfaced.
Susie Draffan, Senior Denim Strategist at WGSN, who has tracked the low-rise silhouette since 2019, told Fast Company she expects even more ultra-low-rise styles to emerge in 2026. Draffan also pointed to a broader shift this year away from the skin-tight original Y2K fit toward styles with more ease and bagginess, a relaxed reinterpretation rather than a straight throwback.
Search Data Shows a Five-Year Climb
Search data shows the same upward arc. Google Trends data for the search term “low rise jeans” in the United States shows interest climbing steadily over the past five years, from the high teens in 2021 to a recurring seasonal peak each August, the back-to-school window, that grew from 18 in 2022 to 48 in 2025. Interest then jumped to an index high of 100 in April 2026, the highest point in the five-year data set, before falling back to 47 by June.
That spike coincides with Coachella, where low-rise denim was widely worn on and off stage, including Olivia Rodrigo in Diesel’s low-rise boyfriend jeans.
Pacsun operates approximately 300 stores in the U.S.
