whose jeans? Fashion's young renegades-As Four and Imitation of Christ, et al-turn to that old-faithful (and potentially banal) all-American fabric: denim.

Byline: Lynn Yaeger

Our silhouettes are so extreme that we thought maybe if we made things in denim, our clothes would speak to a lot more people," explains Gabi, who is one-third of the design collective As Four, when asked why he's fallen so hard for the most predictable, least avant-garde fabric in existence. It's a few days after As Four's all-denim spring show, and he's standing under a mirrored disco ball in the designers' all-silver Lower East Side loft.

As Four is part of a small but influential coterie of usually reliably outre young designers that has embraced the blue stuff this season. The fabric may be ordinary, but the clothes evince the same nutty details these eccentric houses are famous for. At As Four-which burst onto the scene in 2000 with a show consisting of miniature outfits worn by headless spinning dolls-this means jeans with long, twisty seams; a reversible jacket cut like a butterfly in back; and pants so long they could be worn by a giraffe. At Imitation of Christ, Tara Subkoff sent out her pal Scarlett Johansson in high-waisted dark jeans, a black tank, and that symbol of long-lost bohemian cred, the dangling cigarette.

Subkoff, who once put on a runway show in a funeral home, presented a collection that is almost 100 percent denim. "I'm in this for the long haul! I really, really want to be a serious businessman-I mean businesswoman," she explains, "and denim is a uniform now. It's acceptable to wear jeans anywhere. In Hollywood there are really only two times you can't wear them: to the Oscars and the Globes."

Subkoff's fervor for dungarees was stoked by the book Denim: From Cowboys to Catwalks. "Denim is such a big part of American culture," she says. "I love the real aged denim, engineers' denim! It's all about the hardworking blue-collar Americans who have a positive ...