Rick Owens SS26 Detroit Cut

Detroit is the oldest denim name in this house’s vocabulary and it has been in the line, in one weight or another, for the better part of twenty years. It is the slim, low-rise cut, and it is the one that reads as a jean rather than as a statement about jeans. When people say they cannot wear Owens, this is usually the garment that changes their mind.

What separates it from any other slim black jean is the drafting. The pockets are geometric rather than conventional: they are placed and shaped to make the front of the trouser read as a composition rather than as a standard five-pocket layout, and there are six of them. The topstitching, which on most denim is functional and wherever the seam happens to run, is placed here as a line in its own right. Neither of those is visible in a photograph and both are why the jean looks the way it does on.

The fly is concealed with buttons rather than a zip, which removes the hardware from the front entirely and leaves an unbroken plane. Everything on this trouser is about taking things off the surface.

Why we selected it

This is the Owens jean for someone who does not want to think about wearing an Owens jean. It is the pair we hand to a customer who has admired the house from a distance for years and has been waiting for something that asks nothing of them.

Materials and construction

Sixty-two percent cotton and thirty-eight percent nylon. Made in Italy, in Black. Slim fit, low rise, six pockets, concealed button fly, geometric construction detail with placed topstitching. From the Spring/Summer 2026 Temple collection. The nylon is a real proportion rather than a trace, and it is doing two things: it resists abrasion where a pure cotton would go thin at the seat and the knee, and it gives the cloth a firmer, cooler hand that holds the leg line instead of softening into it.

Fit notes

Slim through the leg and low at the rise, which is the closest-cut trouser this house makes. There is no elastane in the cloth, so there is no stretch to rely on and the size you buy is the size: take the waist you can sit down in rather than the one you intend to reach. The nylon means it will not relax through the seat and knee across a day the way a rigid cotton jean does, so what fits in the morning is what fits at six.

Styling

With a boot, and with anything above. A slim black jean is the most flexible thing in a wardrobe and this one is no different, which is the whole reason it exists in a line otherwise devoted to volume.

Care

Wash cool, inside out, and hang to dry. Heat is the thing to avoid, and here for two reasons rather than one: it fades a black cotton unevenly, and a hot dryer will glaze a nylon-content cloth and give it a sheen it did not arrive with. Nothing about this trouser wants a tumble. Our care guidance covers cotton in detail.

Related pieces

The Geth Jeans are the wide cut against this slim one, the SS26 Bolan Banana the shaped one, and the Bolan Bootcut Trousers the flared one. There is more on the house on the Rick Owens designer page. Everything we currently hold from Rick Owens is listed together.