The cropped trouser: Are people ever going to stop rolling up their jeans past their ankles?
In years gone by, after the capri pants controversy of the 1990s, the most avant-garde of fashionistas started daring to go back to those much-criticised times.
What were we thinking with those capri pants? or who would wear cropped trousers? was the refrain.
But roll and crop we did, first with the last days of the hipster and now with the persistence of normcore fashion (please, stop it), the cropped or the rolled trouser/jean seems like it is here to stay.
Uniqlos recent campaign even suggested that its ankle trouser was a new staple.
When Topman, H&M and Uniqlo started to cover all the cropped/roll-up bases, fashion would always look to the new.
And there cant be that much longer left in a fashion that is now seen by Executive Style as a thing that from-breakfast-to-office-to-bar couldnt be more appropriate.
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But as fashion continues its normcore lull, is there really a time on the horizon when the rolled up or cropped trouser will be looked back on with as much disdain as the whole capri era?
It will pass, eventually, Marika Page, a fashion stylist, tells Metro.co.uk.
Most people just tend to crop during spring/summer as you can wear it with trainers. They dont feel as heavy.
For winter, itll stop but itll come back next summer, itll come back with a twist.
What that twist is remains to be seen – the spring/summer 2019 shows had menswear lines with slightly wider cuts of trouser, but there wasnt that much of a twist.
With the frustration of the new not quite reaching the high street, were left with chinos, polo shirts and mediocre trainers.
And those are really no good for anybody.
Page says: Buyers are being quite conservative at the moment so its not going to change that quickly.
Men dont take as many risks with fashion. With jeans, theyre still wardrobe staples but colour, print and fabric are things that are changing – a classic style in a less traditional fabric.
Then thats where we are.
Nobody is yet predicting the end of the cropped trousers, not even the most wavey of fashion writers.
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But there is still concern about how men are wearing them:
Shorter men can get away with it, Page says.
It suits them better. If someone has really long legs it can look out of proportion. Though if you want to create length, the crop is a bad idea. The colour of the jean works as the length of your leg.
And the one-roll, two-roll or three-roll debate? Thats a long discussion and one with no right answer.
If it looks good, then it looks good.
If theres nothing else that normcore has taught us, its that every fashion rule we thought we knew has been thrown out of the window.
Just dont get us started on the socks/no socks/invisible socks debate.
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