How to Style Cropped Straight Leg Jeans

It seems like as soon as I adapt to one style change, another one comes around. For years, I thought boot cut jeans were the only option and skinny jeans were awful. If you’ve paid any attention at all to my style, you probably know how that story ended. Skinny jeans are my fave (as evidenced here and here)! When other cuts started to become prominent once again, I resisted. In the case of cropped straight leg jeans, I resisted they present a unique styling challenge. But the more I saw them, the more they grew on me. So today, I am showing you how to style cropped straight leg jeans, three ways.

Number One: With a fitted t-shirt and tennies

I think the key to making this silhouette work is balance. Because the jeans are wider at the bottom, I like to pair them with a slimmer top to keep the proportions right. Here, I took a graphic t-shirt from J.Crew and knotted it at the side to make the fit slimmer. That also allows you to see the cute button fly detailing on the jeans.

Given that it’s almost winter, I thought I should at least add a sweater to root this look in reality. But you can see that this look would really work in almost every season. You could ditch the sweater and trade out the tennies for flip flops in warmer weather.

Number 2: With a sweater and flats

OK, so this technically more of a sweatshirt than a sweater. But it’s nicely tailored and cut well, so I figured it was close enough. Again, the top has a slimmer, shorter silhouette.

The length of the sweater is important here because a tunic length top would hit in a weird spot and make my legs look short when paired with the cropped jeans. I definitely don’t have short legs, so anyone who isn’t as tall as me (I’m 5’7″ with a 32″ inseam) should be extra mindful of the length of top that they choose. Fortunately, shorter tops are in style right now and therefore easy to find. I added leopard flats to finish off the look.

Number 3: With a blouse and heels

I’m thinking this would absolutely work for casual Friday in an office setting. Similar to the graphic tee above, this top is not short. I could have knotted it like the graphic tee but went with a loose front tuck instead. A front tuck with high waisted jeans can be tricky, so that’s why I pulled out the blouse as much as possible to avoid looking short waisted.

When choosing a shoe, it’s important that you don’t choose one with a tall shaft. For example, an ankle bootie could make your legs look shorter by taking up too much of the visual space between your foot and the hem of the jeans. Although this Eileen Fisher heel has a strap, it is delicate and low, and the pointed toe helps elongate my legs.

I hope you found these suggestions on how to style cropped straight leg jeans helpful. Have you tried them? If so, let me know your favorite way to style them in the comments below! Or if you’d like to skip this trend altogether, you can let me know that too. 😉