The real answer is far more disheartening than all of the above. The Baby Bell Bottom hearkens back to the least flattering pant style ever conceived. It’s a cut clinically proven to cause distress, mood swings, crash diets and bitterness related to genetic inheritance. A cut designed to make anyone under 5′ 9″ look and feel like a bloated rhinoceros. I’m talking, of course, about capris.
I bet Karl Lagerfeld was like Oooh, I know vat vee can do to make zee womens eat less of zee candies and zee sweets. Vee can make a pant zat looks good on only models and tell zem it’s IN. Zey vill never look good in eet unless zey are as tall as zee models, but who cares? Zey will buy eet, hate zemselves, eat less, and b theener and happeeir. Vere ist my afternoon boiled feesh snack?! Lagerfeld, I’ll get you someday, and your little gastric bypass too. But I digress.
To be fair, some capris are more attractive than others – those of the loose harem pant ilk have the bonus of making your calves look smaller. Fitted denim capris a la the Baby Bell, however, defy certain laws of proportions and as such, must be avoided at all costs.
For J Brand‘s attempt to revive the capri via the Baby Bell see below:
The Gigi is a “mid-rise cropped flare inspired by the runway.” I’m assuming this nod to high fashion is why it costs $180.00.
J Brand’s tips for donning the impossible? “Wear it retro with clogs, be feminine with sexy heels or be too-cool-for-school with ankle boots.” So If I wear the Gigi flare with sky-high stilettos or other types of elevated footwear a la the model, I might have a fighting chance of looking halfway decent. What if I pair it with flats? It’s a casual pant, yes?
Yes. A casual pant that, when paired with walkable footwear, gives your shape the appearance of having gone through a box crusher. Sounds fun.
Thank you, J Brand, for re-reminding me of how short I am. Methinks I’m going to leave your runway-inspired style where it belongs – on a model’s body, not on my own.
Stocky wasn’t IN last time I checked.
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I just had to comment since I am 5’3 and was blown away by how good these exact pants looked on me! Sadly though, they didn’t exactly look like capris on me. More like ankle pants. But since i have hips, the bell makes makes me look more even, while regular straight legs and capris make me look ridiculous. I’m SO happy to see a flair leg back for girls with hips!
Ditto on the flare-with-hips tip. I look awful in skinny jeans because I’m curvy, but have skinny ankles- thus resulting in the “apple with 2 toothpicks sticking out” syndrome. Not. Cute. So boot cuts and flairs are a-ok with me!
The good news is that when nobody buys them they will get way reduced and/or end up at daffy’s and then you can snap them, hack them off, and you have jbrand shorts for cheap!