The radical designer whose pee-stained jeans pre-date those viral ones

Chances are, if you spent any time doomscrolling through Instagram or TikTok this weekend, you might have spotted a pair of piss-stained jeans going viral. The denim is the work of rising label JordanLuca, which is fast becoming known for its subversive approach to design: dropping collections that touch on BDSM and fetish aesthetics and bringing some much-needed grit to the historically glossy and glam Milan Fashion Week schedule. 

Though they were released almost a full season ago now, as per usual the mainstream has seemingly just caught wind of them, with celeb rag The New York Post and TMZ publishing scandalised articles on them across the last few days, and Lorraine Kelly even dedicating a segment to them on her early-morning breakfast show. Meaning your mum probably heard about them over her coffee and cornflakes: LOL!

JordanLuca designers Jordan Bowen and Luca Marchetto aren’t the only ones experimenting with saturated denim and sending fans out into the world looking like they’ve been caught short – or, as is more likely given the themes of their work, pissed themselves on purpose. Fellow London designer Dimitra Petsa, who works under brand name Di Petsa has been exploring female wetness within her practice since graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2018. 

Across the last six years, the London Fashion Week standout and former Dazed 100er has debuted dresses that make the wearer look like they’ve been drenched in water, corsets that come with cut-outs to allow for breastfeeding, bras encrusted with crystal droplets, and ‘masturbation’ jeans with pockets just big enough for two fingers affixed to the crotch – god knows what Lorraine would do if she ever heard about those. Alongside this are her own pee-stained trousers, which have been integral to her work from the very beginning. 

Where JordanLuca’s piss jeans are, in part, a response to kink-shaming, Di Petsa’s designs similarly seek to normalise and celebrate the very natural functions of the body that women are conditioned to hide: from periods and pee, to sweat, cum, and breastmilk. Check out her most recent collection in the gallery above, and revisit JordanLuca’s in the gallery below.