I don't know that I'd call them bell-bottoms like the ones in the 70s (with skinny/normal legs, then large at the bottom). Pants in this style in the 90s and early 00s were really baggy all over and frequently dragging on the ground.
Kind-of. Think Austin Powers, Spice Girls, TLC, Oasis, Doc Martins. The late 90's definitely had some aspects that looked like a cultural revival of the 1960s that came out of slacker/ dropout culture.
It's because they're for a niche now. I don't remember them breaking the bank when I got them. More expensive than Levi's sure but they definitely added a zero.
They were $80-100 jeans in '90s dollars back then, so about the same price with inflation really. They were always a niche corner of the market when compared to regular jeans, they were just a popular niche for a while.
No, but it's equivalent to the $180-280 most of the current JNCOs are actually priced at. I think the $2000 comment was exaggerating for effect, because I can't even find anything on their website over $300.
In the late 90's, jeans with gigantic legs were in for both genders, IIRC jeans that were tight/normal down to the knee and then went completely conical down to a huge cuff were called "flares." Or you had the JNCO style 'eight sizes too big" parachute pants look, which was somehow completely separate to the "hammer pants" thing.
The early 2000s had their own take on bell bottoms. Unlike 60's70's bell bottoms which were worn much higher up on the waist, were fairly baggy their entire length with kind of ruffled cuffs worn by both sexes, 21st century bell bottoms were pretty much only a female thing, they were worn much lower at the waist overlapping the "hip hugger" trend, and were worn fairly tight down to lower calf and then had a significantly curved trumpet bell shaped cuff to cover the upper of the shoe but not sweep the floor like 90's parachute pants. Meanwhile guys wore a lot of boot cut carpenter jeans that all had that pointless hammer loop on the left leg.
It's not pointless if you work in a trade, I used to hang paint brushes on them sometimes, but yeah, I don't really wear them except a few times in the past I had manual labor jobs before I finished college.
I took carpentry in high school, and the school issued me a tool belt & tools. I'm left handed, so I wore my hammer on the left side, and the bottom of the handle would catch in that loop and that would keep it parallel with my thigh, it didn't bang around. It actually worked out fairly well; if I were to start wearing a full tool belt with a hammer again I might go back to carpenter jeans if they even still make them.
But, most people are right handed and wear their hammers on the right, and having tried it I can say hanging a hammer straight from that loop; it'll bash your knee out. It's too low.
You can still get carpenter jeans if you need them, actually they are most commonly sold at industrial painting retailers. They are usually white because someone thought it was a good idea to make painters jeans white, lol.
If I were to guess, I'd say that there's no color you could dye painter's clothes that wouldn't get ruined by paint, so it's more cost effective to just leave them cotton white.
We never referred to them as bell bottoms but by their brand name; Jncos. And they were rather popular for a subsect of teenage/young adult culture in the late 90s/early 2000s.