Why ‘The Last of Us’ Zombies Wear Y2K Low-Rise Jeans

There’s a zombie on top of Ellie Williams, the 19-year-old heroine of HBO Max’s The Last of Us. The monster swipes furiously at Ellie’s face and snarls for her brains, doing the usual monster moves that drip along a spectrum from goofy to gross to “this shouldn’t be scary, but I will not actually sleep tonight.”

The attack happens in an abandoned warehouse filled with corpses and ransacked bags of flour. Combined with the zombie invasion, the scene is an archetype of Ye Olde Apocalypse Show, the kind mastered in The Walking Dead and Z Nation. But even if an armageddon wasn’t evident from the scenery, or the creepy mushroom-headed monster jumping on actor Bella Ramsey, there’s one more way this Last of Us episode signals the end of the world: The zombie is wearing ultra-low-rise flare jeans from Chip + Pepper. 

There are two reasons why. The first is practical: In the show’s bleak premise, the zombie invasion happens in 2003, pausing all normal life, including apparel manufacturing. The clothes Ellie and her fellow survivors wear are presumably what they can lift from empty houses and looted stores. The second reason for The Last of Us low-rise obsession is a little more twisted. 

When the bum-grazing jeans first debuted in the Britney Era, the constant emphasis on ultra-thin bodies was at peak “yikes.” So was the now-cringe idea that looking “sexy” for men was actually “empowering” for women. The low-rise jean was the perfect vessel for these two harmful ideas to combine. The pants’ super-tight fit encouraged teen girls like me to get skeletal, and their super-low cut caused us to flash our bare flesh, and sometimes our underwear, whenever we bent down to unzip our backpacks. By recasting these jeans as literal zombie-wear, The Last of Us is making a jagged little joke about Y2K trends and the brainwashing they caused about thinness, sexiness, and power. By forcing kickass characters like Ellie into the same style of pants, The Last of Us also subverts the silhouette of oversexed, underpowered teenage girls. These young women and their zombie counterparts don’t seduce men, they murder them. And they do it in the same thong-flashing jeans.

Ann Foley is the current costume designer for The Last of Us, and she tells InStyle that she’s very much in on this joke. “I honestly lost count of how many jeans we went through for The Infected,” Foley tells me. (“The Infected” are the mushroom zombies. Depending on their level of… uh… zombie-ness, they have different sub-species designations, like “Clicker” and “Stalker.” All of them wear the pants, so to speak.) “They were regular people before they got infected, so we dress them accordingly. We leaned into styles and brands that were popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, like Gap, Old Navy, Eddie Bauer, Columbia, and Vans.” Besides Chip + Pepper, Foley cites the celebrity-loved Paper Denim & Cloth as a Y2K throwback favorite: “If you know, you know.” 

Like the show’s zombie hordes, the denim used on The Last of Us is also undead. Stashed for decades in wardrobes and retail warehouses, Foley and her team hunted down these 30-year-old jeans via internet searches, costume archive visits, and flea market raids. The deadstock denim is augmented with new pairs that mimic the OG styles, which Foley distresses with rips and stains to make them appear well-worn.

“We went through nearly 100 pairs for the main cast alone, not counting Ellie,” says Foley. Thanks to Gen Z’s fascination with Y2K aesthetics, the hunt has gotten a little easier. Contemporary brands like Frame and Edikted are mirroring the style, while OG labels like Diesel, True Religion, and Lucky are cloning their 2001 designs. 

These silhouettes have been reclaimed, somewhat, by The Last of Us’s female heroines, who are more concerned with slashing their enemies than slashing their crop tops for maximum midriff exposure. In Season 1, costume designer Cynthia Summers fit Ellie in a pair of rainbow-embroidered jeans identical to the Rock & Republic low-rise ones worn in 2001 by Degrassi’s teen distressed damsel Emma Nelson (Miriam McDonald). Instead of languishing in homeroom, Ellie wears them to slaughter zombies in the husk of a bombed-out St. Louis suburb. The only time her midriff is exposed is when one of The Infected chomps into her abdomen. She disguises the cut by stabbing herself with a knife and wiping the blood on her denim. (Spoiler Alert: Ellie is immune to the brain-eating mushroom virus, but that’s a secret almost as dangerous as the zombies themselves.) 

It’s a well-worn practice to mirror a TV character’s inner world through her outer outfits. When Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) realized friendship was as powerful as revenge, her sharp-shouldered blazers softened into boucle knit jackets. When Piper Ratliff (Sarah Catherine Hooks) ditched fake Buddhism for real Burberry, she started dressing less like a prairie girl and more like her flawless but shallow mom. Similarly, the pants in The Last of Us do the talking. 

When the vengeance-fueled fighter Abigail (Kaitlyn Dever) plots to murder Joel in Episode 201, she wears the same type of indigo hip-huggers as Sarah Jessica Parker in the 2003 Gap commercials. SJP paired her low-rise pants with a scarf and pink sweater; Abby cinches hers with a giant men’s belt to avoid any hint of skin, which would signal vulnerability. Meanwhile, the playful adventurer Dina (Isabela Merced) leans into a flirty vibe with a tighter fit, a darker wash, and looser studded belts that accentuate, rather than hide, her hips. Dina’s winter coat, a striped puffer by Aviator Nation, is slightly cropped to further show off the jeans.   

Ellie’s journey from confused teen to vengeance-powered young adult has a denim story, too. Her low-rise jeans in Season 1 have evolved to a wider, boxier shape custom-made for Ramsey by Levi’s 501. “She’s leaning towards more masculine silhouettes that echo elements of Joel’s wardrobe,” says Foley, referencing Ellie’s father figure, played by Pedro Pascal. “Ellie has a darkness to her this season that mirrors Joel’s from last season,” Foley explains. “I saw a photo comparison reference online that showed Joel standing with his hands on his hips, followed by a photo of Ellie with her hands on her hips. We really see just how much she embodies his essence.” 

 Even so, the 50 (!) pairs of jeans that Levi’s made for Ellie sit lower on the hips than today’s not-so-low low-rise cuts, a fact that’s emphasized when Ellie takes Joel’s gun and attempts to stash it in her waistband. “You wanna shoot your ass off?” asks Dina when she notices the firearm peeking out of Ellie’s belt loops. Dangerously low jeans are still, after all, a killer look.