Crop tops, that style of shirt or jacket or sweater chopped off anywhere from the bottom of the breasts to the waist, are indelibly connected to the early 2000s, when pop stars like Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears and Mariah Carey made the look their own.
The tops were most often paired with low-rise pants that made the whole look resemble nothing so much as the millennial equivalent of Barbara Eden in I Dream of Jeannie.
Little wonder the look returned on the recent wave of nostalgia for all things Y2K and the last gasp of the analogue world. Baby one more time and all that.
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There are currently 2.4 million posts hashtagged #croptop on TikTok.
But while a large percentage of today’s crop tops may be the province of the generation that didn’t get to experience them the first time round, or anyone who simply wants to show off very worked-out abs – hello Cameron Brink of the WNBA, who recently wore a cropped pinstriped jacket and matching trousers for her tunnel walk – not all crop tops are those crop tops.
Which is to say, not every crop top is either a madeleine for the days of yesteryear or a fashion Freddy Krueger for anyone with poochy stomach anxiety.
Simply consider 71-year-old Oprah Winfrey, who recently, and publicly, declared herself in her crop top era while modelling a short white button-up from Amazon with pinstriped high-waist Stella McCartney pants.
In case anyone didn’t believe her, Winfrey also wore a white side-wrapped Zimmermann crop top and matching joggers while out in Sydney in December, a cropped suede blazer with wide-leg jeans to the Chloé show in February and a pale blue cropped sweater with matching pleated pants to interview the Artemis II crew in May.
She’s all crop much of the time.
But her crop tops – like the button-up shirt worn by Anne Hathaway while filming The Devil Wears Prada 2 – are more structured and sophisticated than the last gen crop tops.
Think of them as crops 3.0. They are less a fashion fluke than a modern way to think about proportion – look for tops that are less T-shirt than actual shirt or jacket and sit closer to the lower than the upper ribs.
They aren’t hard to find. Such tops are available at all price points, from Old Navy to TWP.
According to Tagwalk, the fashion search engine, more than 300 looks from the spring 2026 season included cropped shirts or jackets.
They are favoured by fashion labels as disparate as Chanel, where Matthieu Blazy’s debut collection (the one causing pandemonium in stores) opened with a squared-off men’s blazer truncated to the upper waist, and Monse, the independent label from former Oscar De La Renta designers Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia, the team responsible for Brink’s look.
“Our tops keep getting shorter,” Kim said, during their recent cruise presentation.
The show included crisp, short-sleeve cotton tops with drawstrings at the hem so you could adjust the length as desired, from just above the belly button to just under the breasts.
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The best way to wear them? With high-waist pants or skirts to create the look of an hourglass without all the bulk of stuffing your shirt inside (Monse makes what it calls “corset pants,” with a sort of built-in waist-cincher above the top of the trousers).
She and Garcia started making them in part because Kim herself has a “sort of straight body, with a thick waist,” she said.
“It’s not an Instagram shape,” she added, and she liked the way the combination created curves.
“For shorter girls, I think it works better than a long shirt or longer jacket,” she said.
“A little boxy top sort of sits above the waist. I actually think it’s more flattering than tucking in a long sweater or shirt.” – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
