Let me take a moment to wax poetic: Justin Bieber is the greatest denim wearer of our time. It’s true that guys like Steve McQueen and James Dean have earned their place in the annals of clothing, but The Biebz isn’t quite on par with them. But if you look at his most famous fits—which isn’t even a small selection—you can’t help but notice how enormous his jeans are.
Bieber has stuck to his signature denim silhouette for years now—the wider and baggier the better. He shies away from tiny jeans like the plague, in contrast to some of his chart-topping contemporaries—ditto the stylish high-wasted flares made popular by stars like Harry Styles. His devotion to pavement-skimming, kicks-obscuring trousers, piled over his skate shoes like a perilously stacked mound of pancakes, remains constant, even when he’s dodging the weather in one of his trademark weather-agnostic fits.
Though Bieber rarely veers from his go-to light wash, his inner denimhead always comes out in the details. He’s been seen wearing zip-off cargo pants from Cherry LA and Supreme, trompe l’oeil digital denim jeans from Our Legacy, too many Balenciaga stores to mention, and an abundance of denim from his own Drew House brand, which is embroidered with a smiling face. (He also enjoys wearing “regular” straight-fit jeans that are several sizes too large and have just a shoelace to tighten the waist.) The farthest reaches of the raw denim plains are the only area of the denim cosmos he hasn’t yet visited, but it’s only a matter of time.
His enormous dungarees never fail to remind you who’s king, whether they’re the focal point of an amazing coffee run ensemble, bug-eyed shades, and quirky jewelry. There’s no use in attempting to overtake him because his sense of proportion pays homage to some of the biggest fashion influencers of the past—David Beckham’s small-shirt-big-jeans era comes to mind, for example. Rather, discover your own ideal fit, persevere through it long enough, and you will receive praise from critics and possibly even millions of fans. We’ve compiled a list of 15 images of Bieber looking amazing in denim to assist you in doing just that.