Designer jeans are jeans that were marketed as fashion and status symbols. The Nakash brothers (Joe, Ralph and Avi Nakash) are generally credited with starting the trend when they launched their Jordache line of jeans in 1978. Designer jeans are cut for women and men (but mostly for women), available in many sizes, and often worn skin-tight. They typically feature prominently visible designer names or logos on the back pockets and on the right front coin-pocket.

During the early rise to prominence of designer jeans, in the late 1970s and thoughout the 1980s, it was fairly typical to see fashions for men follow those for women, just as previously women had been the first to wear flared and bell-bottomed trousers. For example, Jordache initially marketed their products to women only, but soon followed with a line for men that was very similar in overall appearance to the women's. Given the general tendency toward bagginess in men's pants today, this male-after-female trend is less noticeable; nevertheless, most jeans companies have offered low-rise cuts for men in recent years, a few of them very low.

Within a few years of the Jordache launch, dozens of other brands were on the market. Among them:

• Sergio Valente
• Sasson
• Gloria Vanderbilt
• Chic
• Calvin Klein
• Bonjour
• Guess?

Racy, suggestive advertisements promoted many of the brands. The first Jordache commercials, with their "You've Got The Look" campaign, were rejected by the networks as "lewd" and carried only by independent television stations in New York. Other memorable television advertising campaigns of the time included Gloria Vanderbilt advertising her jeans as "a million-dollar look", and Brooke Shields posing in a pair of Calvin Kleins and intoning, "Know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing."

In the late 1980s, designer jeans lost popularity. As of 2005, they started coming back into fashion with brands such as Seven for All Mankind, True Religion, Rock N' Republic, MR Jeans and others, typically costing upwards of $200USD. A few of the older brands, namely Jordache, Sergio Valente, and Calvin Klein, are also coming back with the designs that made them popular.