Don’t donate those Jerry Seinfeld jeans to the Salvation Army just yet.

Lighter-blue “washed” denims, often with a looser fit and a higher waist — call them “dad jeans” — may be in fashion again. They have been popping up in street-style blogs like Tommy Ton and the Sartorialist, as well as at fashion-forward retailers like Acne, Supreme, J. Press York Street, Baldwin, Billy Reid and A.P.C.

Some of those high-fade models would not look out of place on President Barack Obama out biking.

It may be premature to declare an end to the era of skinny jeans, the low-slung, raw-denim crotch tourniquets that have ruled the streets of Brooklyn lately. But designers who cater to selvage-denim snobs are detecting a shift in tastes and a step toward lighter washes and fuller pant legs.

“We’re definitely seeing more of a washed look, a longer rise, a little fuller thigh,” said Tyler Thoreson, the vice president for men’s editorial and creative at Gilt, the flash-sale site. “The edgier guys are going with a drop-crotch taper look.”

Part of the shift might be attributed to the cyclical nature of fashion.

“It’s a backlash against the now-ailing Americana-urban woodsman trend,” said Brad Bennett, who runs Well Spent, an influential men’s style blog. “Dad jeans are pretty much the total opposite, and thus, a quick and easy way for people who don’t want to be associated with the lumberjack look to distance themselves.”

There is also a practical aspect.

“People want to be more comfortable,” said Benjamin Talley Smith, the creative director of Earnest Sewn, the cult-favorite jeans label, which has unveiled the Dexter, a straight-leg jean with a “full thigh.” Even fashion bloggers admit that skinny jeans are not exactly comfy.

“I don’t really find myself ever reaching for my pair of far more expensive raw denim that I have hanging in my closet,” said Jake Gallagher, who runs the menswear blog Wax Wane. “Probably, at least three or four days a week, I’m wearing what would be called ‘dad jeans,’” which he defines as faded washed-out denim (he prefers Levis 501s).

Indeed, some jeans snobs are just “finding that the time investment and work that goes into breaking in a pair — six months without washing, the initial discomfort — isn’t always worth it,” said Jian DeLeon, who writes for Complex, a style magazine.

But before you raid your father’s closet, it should be noted that this denim fetish is confined to certain hyper-stylized urban pockets and that most American men never stopped wearing dad jeans. At the same time, there is a big difference between the dad jeans bought at a Wal-Mart and the ones now being peddled on menswear blogs. No self-respecting bearded mixologist is going to be caught dead in the loosefitting, pancake-rump jeans favored by over-50 suburbanites.