The Best Jeans for Men Are Juggernauts of American Style

Since their invention, jeans have helped mold some of the coolest guys in history, from James Dean to Kendrick Lamar. Today, the best jeans for men follow in that great lineage and can even fold a plebe like you into the annals of style history, as they’ve done for countless fashion greats.

But let’s get this straight: The jeans we know today—rugged, riveted, rendered in inky-blue cotton—were invented way back in the late 1800s in Reno, Nevada by a Latvian immigrant and tailor by the name of Jacob Davis. Davis sold his hard-wearing trousers to tradesmen, factory workers, and gold miners who liked his product so much that he asked his fabric supplier, Levi Strauss, for financial backing and help with applying for the patent for his rivet invention. On May 20, 1872, the two were awarded the patent and the rest, as they say, is menswear history.

Jeans have been barred from hotels, smuggled into countries, and, above all else, remixed and riffed on by every generation discovering them anew—which, in this day and age, makes finding the right pair for you all the more difficult. Add to that having to navigate things like stretch, skinny jeans, light wash, dark wash, and finding the perfect fit may as well be impossible. That’s where we come in.

The Best Jeans for Men, According to GQ

Best Jeans Overall

Levi’s 501 Original Fit Men’s Jeans

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Best Budget Jeans

Wrangler 13MWZ Cowboy Cut Original Fit Jeans

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Best Upgrade Jeans

3sixteen CS-100x Jeans

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Best Jeans Since Jeans Were Invented: Levi’s 501 Original Fit Jeans

Sometimes, the easy, obvious answer just so happens to be the right one. And when it comes to denim, the easy, obvious, and unquestionably right answer is the Levi’s 501, the most influential silhouette from the most influential denim brand. For first-timers who’ve somehow never owned a pair or dudes returning to the style after a long hiatus, this is where your search should start—and where it’ll probably end, too.

Levi’s invented blue jeans, so you’d expect its flagship silhouette to be halfway decent. More unexpected, though, is how well the 501 has held up decades after it first hit the market. The denim is still substantial and sturdy, the details are still near-perfectly dialed, and the silhouette is still the prototypical straight-leg fit. Plus, the sheer amount of washes and sizes it’s available in means there’s an option for almost everyone.

That being said, 501s have rarely ever worked for this particular writer. My knocked knees and Filipino calves make the iconic jean look more like a tapered fit, so I have to look to wider options for the same effect. But consider me the minority because for countless folks across literal generations, the 501 does the trick just fine. And while we dig the sheer variety of washes, colors, and fabrics it comes in, we’d strongly recommend the all-cotton versions over the stretch-infused joints.