Babydoll Tops and Baggy Jeans: Back-to-School Special
sos: i watched 1000s of teen shopping hauls
Welcome back to After School Monday Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers. 🫶
In today’s letter:
A deep dive into back-to-school hauls and the top 15 purchases
Gen Z’s obsession with sweatpants *without cuffs*
Baggu’s popular Photo Forest camo print — stolen from TrueTimber — is now its most popular pattern yet
Why Crocs’ ugly-shoe era might be ending
The new “it” Birkenstock
The great no-show sock comeback
Why girls are panicking about “dorm water”
Zoomers’ camera obsession isn’t enough to save Kodak
“Leak marketing” is the new influencer seeding
Gen Z’s turning to ChatGPT for “glow up” advice
Clinical skincare as Gen Z’s new status symbol
And so much more, plus everything I’m buying, reading, and listening to. But first, my favorite TikTok of the week:
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WHAT TEENS ARE BUYING FOR BACK-TO-SCHOOL
Every year, I watch thousands of back-to-school hauls, tallying up the most popular items and highlighting the foremost trends. Here’s 2024, and here’s 2023. It’s part anthropology and part consumer research (and if I’m being honest, part guilty pleasure).
Back-to-school spending in the U.S. is expected to hit $128 billion this year. And while 26% of shoppers plan to cut back, with 49% citing inflation, you’d never know it from these hauls. As one teen girl put it, “I know that this is over consumerism, but I really don’t care.”
First, a couple of observations:
Denim is bigger than ever. After years of being overlooked in favor of leggings, sweatpants, and cargos, denim is back on top. Girls bought five, six, even seven pairs of jeans. Last year, I wrote that I couldn’t recall seeing a single haul that didn’t have at least one pair of low-rise baggy jeans, and that’s doubly true this year, too.
They’ve collectively discovered black jeans. While they’re still buying blue jeans, particularly light washes and classic indigo, they’re also notably buying black jeans — specifically, faded black denim that’s closer to gray than 2012-era inky black.
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserThey’ve also succumbed to the barrel jean. It’s really interesting to see such a millennial-coded trend infiltrate high school and junior high.
Speaking of millennial adjacencies, no-show socks may be making a comeback. They came up several times.
Leggings are obsolete. A few days ago, Rory Satran wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the downfall of leggings and the rise of what she calls the “Big Workout Pant.” After two decades as the reigning athleisure staple, leggings have lost cultural cachet; instead, Gen Z favors looser, swishier pants that recall 1990s dancewear. Sales reflect the shift — leggings made up nearly half of athleisure bottoms in 2022 but have dropped to 38.7% in 2025 — and so do back-to-school hauls.
Girls really love their sweatpants. Denim is indeed more popular than it has been in years, but there’s still a sweeping sweats obsession. They’re worn low-slung and baggy, like jeans, and often paired with baby tees and camisoles. Light gray is the undisputed favorite — I don’t think I saw a single pair of black sweats — but butter yellow and chocolate brown are very popular, too.
One of the most amusing things I learned this year is that there’s a big push towards “non-cuffed sweatpants.” I kept hearing “sweats, without cuffs” in hauls, and was confused — what is a cuffed sweatpant? Upon further investigation, I learned that by “cuffs” they mean elastic-ankle sweats, which are decidedly not cool, unless they’re part of Demetra’s Aeropostale collection.
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When it comes to back-to-school shopping, the haul is the whole point, and the shopping bag is just as important as what’s inside it. When I was a kid, my mom would drive me two hours to the Chesterfield Mall in St. Louis, the closest Abercrombie, American Eagle, and Gap to my hometown. We’d leave with one or two big bags crammed full of everything. Today’s kids do it differently: they collect a separate shopping bag at each store, purely for the optics of the haul. Case in point: one girl who ordered stuff online, then staged her TikTok haul by putting it into a shopping bag (fast-forward to 00:49).
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THE TOP 15 MOST POPULAR PURCHASES FOR BACK-TO-SCHOOL
1) Hollister Satin-Tie Babydoll Top, $30: This Y2K top was so ubiquitous ahead of back-to-school season that it became a meme. The navy blue polka dot and maroon polka dot were clear favorites, but the pink pastel version came up a lot, too.
2) Pacsun Casey Low Rise Baggy Jeans, $60: This particular jean has been a fan-favorite for a few years now; in 2024, it became a TikTok phenomenon, generating $20 million in sales after a video by micro-influencer Lyla Biggs went viral. Her post helped Pacsun sell 11,000 pairs in just 48 hours before Black Friday and 60,000 pairs on TikTok overall, sparking a “halo effect” that drove shoppers into physical stores. CEO Brie Olson said the brand has since sold, as of this past March, 200,000 pairs on TikTok alone, doubling year-over-year denim comps.
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3) Adidas Campus Shoes, $110: By far the most popular sneaker this year. As one girl put it, “I think every single teenage girl on the planet owns these.” They’re still wearing Sambas, especially cutesy ones like this, as well as all-white On running shoes, but the Campus was the most-purchased shoe this year. I saw all kinds of colors — black, pink, blue — but the gray was the top choice.
4) Brandy Melville Elena Button-Front Top, $26: Everyone’s buying button-front bohemian-style blouses to wear with their low-slung jeans, and this particular style from Brandy Melville — also sold at Pacsun under the “John Galt” label — was one of the most-mentioned styles. It comes in a dozen colors, but the polka dot, gingham, and butter yellow came up the most.
5) Free People My Time Open-Back Tee, $48: I couldn’t believe how often this top was mentioned. At almost fifty bucks a pop, the completely open back design means that girls also had to spring for matching sports bras and bralettes to pair with it. This $50 striped sports bra was especially coveted, showing up again and again.
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