Last September, my LA-based friend Brooke lamented to me about the dearth of wardrobe-refresh buttons for the fall season. “Go get a pair of culottes,” I told her. “They will change your life.” Personally, I’ve always loved a culotte—the only pant that resembles a skirt, my bottom-half staple.
“At the time I thought you were completely out of touch with regular women,” Brooke (who doesn’t work in fashion) recently recalled. “But I just bought a pair and my husband told me I look hot.”
Hot culottes? These voluminous cropped pants usually come fraught with fashion caveats and user-warnings. Handled without care, you risk looking like a clown, or worse, one foot shorter or 10 pounds larger than you actually are.
Il Mio Marito: “Those are totally dumpy,” my husband observed one cold winter day when I had pulled on an edgy, new, high-waisted pair by Acne in camel-colored, boiled wool that I wore with flat Comme des Garçons shoes. Up until that point, he’d let the culottes slide—but these got slapped with an outright ban.
N°21’s Alessandro dell’Acqua: “It is very easy to look ridiculous in them,” he says of these tricky pants. “They look best on tall women. It’s hard for short women to pull them off.”
Nonetheless, Dell’Acqua is nuts about the shape, offering them for all seasons and occasions. For winter, he likes heavy wool-tweed versions paired with boxy jackets or coats. For spring, he suggests a crisp, light cotton pair worn with an oversized cropped sweater, and for evening, duchesse satin culottes paired with a white man’s shirt in crepe de chine—even better if it has a dusting of crystal embroidery or other feminine detail.
To avoid looking ‘dumpy’, the designer focuses on footwear. “A heel will give you a whole other look with this pant,” he says. His preference is the modern lift of a flatform shoe or sandal. “But I also like this with flat sandals paired with low ankle socks—even in winter.”
Also key to creating flames is making sure you get a well-fitted pair of culottes that accentuate the waist. Brooke took that note and had her plum cotton pair from Tome taken in there. She paired them with a sexy Tibi black silk faille crop top. “To be honest, my husband probably didn’t even look at the culottes,” she admits. “I think he was staring at my belly button.”
lIl Mio Marito– my husband
– J.J. Martin
