Crop tops have been in for more than a decade at this point. I remember buying a mock neck one with a skater skirt back in 2014 and feeling like it was peak fashion. They’ve gone through a ton of iterations, with different collars and silhouettes, but lately we’ve gone from just a “crop” to more of a bra forward trend in the celebrity fashion world, as sported by the likes of Kim Kardashian and Baywatch reboot cast member Brooks Nader.
We’ve seen Emma Watson and others rock the bra top under a blazer or a cardigan in the past, so it’s not as if I’ve never seen a bra be used as a top. (In fact, it might have been Seinfeld in the nineties that popularized the trend originally.) However, it’s one thing for an edgy look to crop up every once and awhile, word choice intended, and quite another to see it going more fully in the way of a common look, which seems to be happening now.
Brooks Nader gets the credit for capturing my attention first. The actress and social media star switched out her Baywatch red for a black and white stunner at Paris Fashion week. The event? EE72 One Year Anniversary Celebration at L'Avenue. The look? A Jean Paul Gaultier Corseted outfit.
Separately, Kim Kardashian was on the same wavelength with her Sunday Times Style feature. On the cover itself she’s rocking a black bra with a high end skirt, but it’s the second image in the thread that’s the most striking to me: a satin corset top rocked with a distressed vintage tee dress. In Kim’s case, she was absolutely promoting her SKIMS line and mixing it up with some high-end fashion pieces. The black look seen below was a SKIMS bra + a Gucci skirt.
Of course, what you might wear on a newspaper or magazine cover is not necessarily what you’d wear out in real life, but I do think it’s striking the two separate women rocked similar fits so close to one another. When we talk about wearing cropped in the future, we may simply mean wearing innerwear as outerwear. That’s certainly proven true with the recent corset trend, as seen most recently on Florence Pugh while she was doing East of Eden press, as well as Katee Sackhoff promoting Carrie with a corseted dress.
The future is now.
