Good high-street jeans are hard to find. Trust me—I’ve tried a lot of them. I’m what you would call a jeans person, and I daren’t even admit to you how many pairs I’ve accumulated over the years in my search for the perfect pair. In my opinion, you just can’t beat an outfit that consists of a crisp white shirt or T-shirt and a pair of classic jeans. It’s a timeless, versatile combination that, if you get just right, you can build upon over the years with other items from your closet, depending on the look you want to achieve.
My collection does include some investment designer styles that I swear by—Re/Done’s stove pipe and Agolde’s popular pinch waist, for example. But I take particular pleasure in the challenge of finding really good jeans on the high street. I have soft spots for M&S’s comfortable styles and Weekday’s high-quality stiff denim, but I’d never really found success with H&M jeans before. That was until this week, when I was tasked with trying on as many of its latest best sellers as I could get my hands on for research purposes. (It’s a hard job, but someone’s got to do it). And I came away seriously impressed.
I was blown away by both the variety of on-trend cuts (that ticked every box from skinny to wide-leg) and the fits. Most pairs fit exactly true to size (if they didn’t, I’ve made a note below), with just enough stretch in them to flatter in all the right places. I’m a pretty standard size 10, but I don’t have the skinniest legs, so one of the most difficult things I find when buying jeans is getting the waist to fit snugly without being too tight on the leg. And I have to say, H&M has this nailed.
So if you’ve been searching for a great new pair of classic jeans to bolster your collection, keep scrolling to see the six H&M pairs I rate, and shop them below.
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