The Best Jeans for Men Are Juggernauts of American Style

The best jeans for men are easy-going, hard-wearing, and downright legendary. That pedigree is all thanks to Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, who literally invented jeans as we know ‘em today—rugged, riveted, rendered in inky-blue cotton—way back in the late 1800s, shilling them to tradesmen, factory workers, and gold miners hoping to strike it rich. In the early days of their relationship, Strauss and Davis experimented with different fabrics and finishes, eventually landing on an indigo-dyed cotton twill as sturdy as it was handsome. The rest, as they say, is menswear history.

A century and a half later, blue jeans have become America’s single most influential contribution to the global fashion canon, transforming the way we dress in the process. That’s no exaggeration: Over the decades, jeans went from humble proletariat garb to splashy designer fare, with plenty of historic pit stops at each leg of the journey. In the time since Strauss and Davis introduced their signature product, jeans have outfitted everyone from plebes to presidents, making icons out of too many of them to count. (Brando and Dean come to mind pretty fast.)

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 2024, makes finding the right pair for you all the more difficult. That’s where we come in. Over the last few months, GQ’s resident team of denimheads tested an ocean’s worth of top-notch dungarees, shimmying into dozens of pairs to land on the 13 below. Taken in aggregate, they represent an indigo-soaked snapshot of our favorite jeans past and present—and make gift-giving a breeze, whether you’re shopping for your dad, your significant other, or literally any fella with a bare wardrobe. From the genre-defining stalwarts to the newfangled indie riffs, this is every pair we love.