Chris Kelly and Chris Smith of Kris Kross in the "Jump" music video.
Photo: Courtesy of Sony BMG Music
In 1992 there were two kinds of trends. Stuff that actually reached me living all the way in Hong Kong before the Internet and stuff that entirely escaped my notice. As a seventh grader going to British school, I thought Kris Kross was the greatest. Shipping tariffs were astronomical for CDs, all of our magazines were about six months behind, we had one bootleg English-language channel that showed music videos infrequently, and we knew that they'd never tour us so it was awesome to be able to at least bounce in time and wear clothes backwards. Of course this was only on weekends since we had to wear school uniforms that featured little neckties and grey blazers.
There was an art to it. Your jeans had to be massive but in a certain way and they had to sag really low because, "everything is to the back, with a little slack/'cause inside out is wiggity wiggity wiggity wack" etc which meant you had to wear boxers which was sort of a rarity in my school since boxers were really American and those kids had their own school. It was an easier transition for the skate kids since they were already wearing 34" jeans (for the record, Chris Smith wore 36" and Chris Kelly wore 34" at the time) or chinos but the American kids had an advantage in full-out mimicry since they could have family members ship in things like wool varsity jackets and massive jerseys.
