While Alternatives Have Been Attempted Recently,
There is No Substitute for a Cropped Pant Hem
It all started with Thom Browne. Back in 2001, Browne ditched an envious position designing for Club Monaco to start his own eponymous brand. His first order of business was to completely redesign the suit. At the time suits were sadly lingering in frumpy, oversized silhouettes from the 90s. Inspired by tailoring from 1960s London and 1920s New York, Browne slimmed everything down cropped pant hem and shorter jacket silhouette. His signature silhouette solidified in 2006 when he won a CFDA award for Best Menswear Designer. The slim, short jackets and tapered, cropped pants – reminiscent of British prep school uniforms – departed so extremely from contemporaneous tailoring that it forced a hard reset of mens formal wear.
Much has changed in menswear over the two decades since Browne went rogue. Silhouettes got tighter, then looser. Men started dressing more formally in everyday life, then Streetwear took off. High quality heritage and startup brands proliferated at the same time as fast fashion. Through it all, details of Browne’s design have waxed and waned in popularity but always remained relevant. Now, as menswear adapts to post-quarantine life with the rest of us, suiting has taken on a decidedly 1970s vibe. One crucial element remains from Browne’s legacy: the cropped pant hem.
Cropped hems had a strong moment in the early 2010s when mainstream brands like J.Crew and Suitsupply adopted them. Then their popularity faded as the decade closed out in favor of wider legs and baggier breaks. When any fashion trend reaches a critical mass of adoption, it inevitably invokes a push back from fashion contrarians. Sometimes this dissent is justified and successfully overthrows the established trend, such as Browne did in 2006. Other times the dissent proves to be spiteful and cannot sway the fashion zeitgeist. It appears that in this case, baggy pants cannot overthrow the cropped hem because in autumn 2021, they’re everywhere.
How your pant leg lays at the bottom is called the break. A full break will leave a couple creased as the pant lays upon the shoe, a slight or “half break” will leave one crease when standing still, and no break is when the pant doesn’t touch the shoe at all. Most brands and stylists of the 00’s menswear revolution chose to go with no break, signified by a tight crease making a straight vertical line all the way down. An entire generation of men who found a love for suiting over the past decade and half acquired the taste for little to no break. The Thom Browne crop may be an extreme example but it looks cleaner and more refined than certain baggy, frumpy looks of late (re: Justin Bieber at the ‘21 Met Gala).
It’s been nearly twenty years since Thom Browne reinvented the suit based on tailoring from sixty years ago. Fashion is cyclical, looks come and go but some looks stick around for a while. Cropped pant hems are one of those resilient trends because they just look better than any of the alternatives that have come around. Whether you prefer skinny or wide legs, a messy break is just unkempt. While suiting continues to evolve otherwise, it looks like for the foreseeable future you can’t stop the crop.