“Crop” remains in the TOP or the main must have of spring-summer 2022

“Oh baby, baby, How was I sup­posed to know …” — sound­ed in the late 90s from every iron, and to the beat of the young and incen­di­ary Brit­ney in a hot image, school­girls rhyth­mi­cal­ly moved their flat tum­mies in short tops, fans of the pop icon ‑music around the world.

It was thanks to such flag­ships of pop cul­ture as Brit­ney Spears, Christi­na Aguil­era, Jen­nifer Lopez that the cropped top was firm­ly entrenched in the wardrobe of fash­ion­istas at the begin­ning of the 2000s. In the same peri­od, the well-known “glam­our queen” Paris Hilton, whose images were copied and exploit­ed by mil­lions of teenagers, also had a hand in the deaf­en­ing pop­u­lar­iza­tion of crop tops.

It is no won­der that the fash­ion of the 2000s, shin­ing with rhine­stones, full of “plush” track­suits in shades of “gouge out your eyes” and replete with total pink and reveal­ing out­fits that expose the max­i­mum amount of the female body, is right­ful­ly con­sid­ered the era of kitsch, glam­our, and the apoth­e­o­sis of vul­gar­i­ty, which until now, with a shud­der of the heart, con­ser­v­a­tives, big­ots and oth­er guardians of moral­i­ty recall. The fash­ion trend for cropped mod­els of tops, piquant­ly open­ing the line of the abdomen, was con­sid­ered infan­tile and provoca­tive, and was used by a rather nar­row, albeit exten­sive in its total num­ber, lay­er of fash­ion­istas. In par­tic­u­lar, we are talk­ing about young ladies of puber­ty who are look­ing for self-expres­sion and who want to empha­size their fem­i­nin­i­ty through delib­er­ate sex­u­al­i­ty. By the broad mass­es, this trend was per­ceived with hos­til­i­ty and it was believed that a decent girl should not dress in this way.

As you know, fash­ion is cycli­cal and now the crop top has not only returned, or rather burst into the cat­walks of the lead­ing fash­ion hous­es, but also firm­ly entrenched there, though already in a com­plete­ly new qual­i­ty and read­ing. It’s time to break stereo­types and rethink our opin­ion about cropped tops, look at them from a dif­fer­ent angle, refract­ing our per­cep­tion through the prism of today, in which the world has once again set new canons of beau­ty, offer­ing us com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent con­texts and solu­tions for com­bin­ing and inte­grat­ing this piece of cloth­ing in our wardrobes. “GIVE CROPPED TO THE MASS!” — I just want to chant, leaf­ing through fash­ion mag­a­zines.

Has the crop top real­ly become such a uni­ver­sal ele­ment of the wardrobe and is suit­able for every­one and for all occa­sions?! Let’s fig­ure it out: let’s debunk the myths and com­mon mis­con­cep­tions about the short top, but first, let’s turn to the ori­gins and remem­ber how it all began.

It turns out that the pro­to­type of the mod­ern crop top is “choli” — a clas­sic ele­ment of the nation­al Indi­an cos­tume worn under a sari. In the 40–50s of the 20th cen­tu­ry, the incom­pa­ra­ble Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe began to flaunt in cropped sweaters and turtle­necks, excit­ing the minds of fans and admir­ers with a new fash­ion­able dis­cov­ery, which until now had been pre­sent­ed to the Euro­pean and Amer­i­can pub­lic exclu­sive­ly on the stage of cabaret in pro­duc­tions on ori­en­tal themes.

But as you know, “what is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the bull,” and the crop top, beloved by many, which has become one of the main attrib­ut­es of the pin­up style, in real life retained its taboo sta­tus, since it was con­sid­ered inde­cent and immoral to open the stom­ach. Not even with­out a few cas­es of arrest in New York!

Like the Phoenix bird, the fash­ion for crop tops was reborn from the ash­es in the 60s of the 20th cen­tu­ry, when, in the wake of the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion, hip­pies began to active­ly use them in their out­fits as a sym­bol of the nat­u­ral­ness and puri­ty of the naked body. As it usu­al­ly hap­pens, the trend was bor­rowed from the sub­cul­ture by pop stars of the time, includ­ing Madon­na and Cher, who again updat­ed the fash­ion for an open tum­my for the gen­er­al pub­lic. And after anoth­er nat­ur­al cool­ing to this fash­ion trend, years lat­er we met the new mil­len­ni­um entire­ly in short tops under the imper­ish­able call of the above-men­tioned Mrs. Spears, as if addressed to His Majesty the crop top, as a sym­bol of the new fash­ion­able era! “Hit me baby one more time …” (trans­la­tion: “Baby, hit me again …”) — the sweet-voiced blonde sang! The cir­cle is closed.

But let’s has­ten to emerge from the seething time streams of the past and plunge into the serene expanse of today’s day. So, what are the prej­u­dices that stop us from acquir­ing the above fash­ion hit.

Stereo­type 1: CROPPED TOP IS ONLY SUITABLE FOR THIN GIRLS WITH PERFECT PRESS — IT LOOKS UNESTHETIC ON OTHERS!

Well, I do not! You and I were lucky to live in the era of the cult of human rights and free­doms, when human­i­ty, in uni­son, decid­ed to self­less­ly and fear­less­ly fight with each oth­er for the rights of our­selves, and it should be not­ed that it has sig­nif­i­cant­ly suc­ceed­ed in this field, although it has not been with­out inci­dents when pro­tect­ed the rights of some began to sud­den­ly infringe on the rights of oth­ers, and even, God for­bid, offend their feel­ings. But let’s not talk about sad things, because in this uni­ver­sal bat­tle and clash of inter­per­son­al inter­ests, quite nice and absolute­ly harm­less social phe­nom­e­na and asso­ci­a­tions spon­ta­neous­ly arose.

One of these social move­ments was called “body pos­i­tiv­i­ty” and pro­claimed the right to feel com­fort­able in your body in any appear­ance. “My body is not your prob­lem” — says their life-affirm­ing and defi­ant man­i­festo. Under this slo­gan, many puffy rebels decid­ed to try on the very thing they want­ed: short and tight-fit­ting, for which a mer­ci­less soci­ety always strove to obstruct the poor things and pub­licly burn them at the stake, so as not to defile their eyes with the appear­ance of an imper­fect (accord­ing to their point of view) body! And, oh mir­a­cle! It turned out that short and tight-fit­ting clothes not only have the right to be worn on the body, whose shapes dif­fer from the cher­ished “90–60-90”, but also with a com­pe­tent game with body pro­por­tions and thought­ful com­bi­na­tion of these gar­ments with oth­er well-cho­sen things — com­pan­ions, a very styl­ish and har­mo­nious ensem­ble can be formed, empha­siz­ing the main advan­tages of the fig­ure, divert­ing the focus of per­cep­tion from its prob­lem areas.

So, styl­ists and image mak­ers rec­om­mend that when choos­ing a wardrobe for girls of the “Plus size” size, in order to form the cor­rect pro­por­tions of the body, focus on the area under the breast and just below it, which is pre­cise­ly the nar­row­est line of the body if there is excess weight on it, because, as It is known that extra pounds are formed main­ly in the waist and low­er abdomen. Thus, the waist visu­al­ly shifts from its usu­al loca­tion upwards, and the over­all sil­hou­ette is stretched and the fig­ure looks slim­mer. In addi­tion, this tech­nique allows you to visu­al­ly length­en the low­er body, and there­fore the legs. It is cus­tom­ary to empha­size this line with a belt or belt, but why not make this accent with a crop top that piquant­ly reveals a nar­row strip of the body, com­bined with an exten­sive line of cloth­ing with the high­est pos­si­ble fit, which will del­i­cate­ly mask and lev­el out excess vol­ume.

For­tu­nate­ly, high waist fash­ion does not leave us to fend for our­selves and offers a wide range of mod­els, from clas­sic pen­cil skirts and styl­ish palaz­zo trousers to basic jeans of var­i­ous con­fig­u­ra­tions! At the same time, the image turns out to be styl­ish, mod­ern, bal­anced and at the same time cap­ti­vat­ing and excit­ing, and it cer­tain­ly can­not be clas­si­fied as awk­ward or ridicu­lous, the main thing is not to over­do it and not com­plete­ly turn off the crit­i­cal per­cep­tion of one­self. By the way, the main star of gos­sip columns Kim Kar­dashi­an, who is very dif­fi­cult to call thin, often uses the described tech­nique.

Of course, since there is a recipe for prepar­ing a fash­ion­able set with a short top for puffy girls, then young ladies with a nor­mal physique, who have some minor fig­ure imper­fec­tions, can also safe­ly use a crop top to cre­ate fash­ion­able top­i­cal bows, beat­ing it using these prin­ci­ples. Bin­go! The myth can be con­sid­ered debunked.

Stereo­type 2. CROPPED TOP IS AN ATTRIBUT OF EXCLUSIVELY SPORTS CLOTHING. IT IS NOT SUITABLE FOR EVERYDAY, BUSINESS, EVENING AND OTHER LOOK.

Yes Yes! There is also an opin­ion that a crop top or rash­guard, as it is com­mon­ly called, per­ceived as part of a sporty style, looks appro­pri­ate only in gym loca­tions on the “dried” bod­ies of beau­ties in tight com­pres­sion leg­gings and, of course, in Balen­ci­a­ga’s epic ugly sneak­ers for 5600 rub. (where would we be with­out them… and, of course, this is the orig­i­nal, just lucky to grab an unheard-of action)!

We owe the for­ma­tion of such a stereo­type to those very won­der­ful Insta­gram divas, whose pho­tos from fit­ness clubs were once full of the feed of one great and ter­ri­ble social net­work (rest in peace, Insta­gram!). Let’s get rid of this prej­u­dice! Crop top has long gone beyond sports. hall, but also feels great in gen­er­al out­side the frame­work of a sports style, com­fort­ably set­tling in a niche of every­day, evening, cock­tail and more­over — even office and wed­ding looks — that’s unheard of inso­lence! But more on that lat­er, but for now let’s focus on the con­tem­pla­tion of cool SPORT bows that are rel­e­vant in 2022. Look, enjoy, take on a pen­cil!

Let’s move on! The recipe for a styl­ish EVERYDAY look is extreme­ly sim­ple: we take a crop top as a basis, add jeans, care­ful­ly mon­i­tor the har­mo­nious dis­tri­b­u­tion of vol­umes, sea­son with a blaz­er if desired, use com­fort­able shoes and a drop of acces­sories, shake every­thing up, but do not mix! And, voila! The most deli­cious trendy cock­tail is ready!

Fur­ther, I pro­pose to pay atten­tion to the fol­low­ing meta­mor­pho­sis — it is enough to replace sneak­ers with ele­gant high-heeled shoes, casu­al jeans with loose trousers of a fly­ing cut or styl­ish culottes, and our every­day bow mirac­u­lous­ly trans­forms into a COCKTAIL.

To cre­ate a more dar­ing mood, choose the most open crop top, bal­anc­ing it with extra high-rise trousers.

The image acquires a spe­cial fem­i­nin­i­ty when com­bined with a cropped top with skirts of var­i­ous cuts and styles. Just a feast for the eyes, look and admire!

To com­pile a spec­tac­u­lar EVENING set, we no longer have to arrange “dances with tam­bourines”, try­ing with the help of local­ly dis­trib­uted volu­mi­nous and bag­gy forms to dilute the veil of eroti­cism, cre­at­ed, per­haps, by any cropped top, regard­less of its con­fig­u­ra­tion. In this con­text, we can afford to sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the degree of sex­u­al­i­ty by dress­ing in a total­ly tight-fit­ting out­fit, the main high­light of which, of course, will be a crop top. But be care­ful: when the clock strikes 12, so that your car­riage does not turn into a pump­kin, and your clothes into rags, it is impor­tant to remem­ber and observe one sacred rule: no mini against the back­ground of a full fit, we give pref­er­ence to skirts below the knee and maxi-length. And you will be hap­py!

Well… The most deli­cious was left for dessert — it’s time to won­der how the design­ers man­aged to inte­grate the crop top into the “holy of holies” — wed­ding fash­ion. I guess com­ments are super­flu­ous here… Let’s abstract, look, get inspired!

And now we will con­sid­er the “con­trol in the head” and the myth of the unwear­a­bil­i­ty of the crop top debunked. Let’s talk about how this impu­dent scout man­aged to pen­e­trate and firm­ly estab­lish him­self inside such a harsh and con­ser­v­a­tive — busi­ness dress code. Hal­lelu­jah! Final­ly, charm­ing employ­ees of numer­ous offices in our coun­try can, with­out fear of get­ting a strict rep­ri­mand with enter­ing into a per­son­al file, com­ple­ment their bag­gy over­sized suits with our already beloved crop top, or com­bine it with an ele­gant jack­et and pen­cil skirt. It looks like a sim­i­lar image, well, it’s very fresh and some­how not at all office-style. Judge for your­self…

Stereo­type 3. “CROPPED TOP IS NOT PRACTICAL!”

-… we run the risk of hear­ing a con­cise and cat­e­gor­i­cal syn­op­sis from our beloved moth­er / car­ing grand­moth­er / aunt Tama­ra’s neigh­bor / good friend / inner self (choose the cor­rect option, oth­er­wise every­thing is indi­vid­ual here), show­ing off your fash­ion­able new thing!

Such an objec­tion, in fact, includes a whole range of doubts — well-found­ed and not very well-found­ed. “Are you going to go out­side like that…?”,

“Look, don’t get cold kid­neys in win­ter…”,

“Is it real­ly decent to go out” to peo­ple “with an open stom­ach?”,

“I wast­ed my mon­ey, I’d rather buy a clas­sic basic item, oth­er­wise these top­ics will soon go out of fash­ion”,

“Maybe it’s bet­ter to give this blouse to your younger sis­ter, oth­er­wise at your age they don’t wear it any­more! By the way, I remem­ber in the fifth grade you had the same one …”,

“What, your size was not in the store?” — this is just a short list of pos­si­ble reac­tions that we are like­ly to encounter.

We are not in a hur­ry to object, we count to our­selves up to 10, exhale, enter the state of “zen” and now we explain every­thing in order, sum­ma­riz­ing all of the above!

So: Crop top. Instruc­tions for use.

Descrip­tion and com­po­si­tion: a cropped mod­el of a top, t‑shirt, longsleeve, turtle­neck, pullover, jumper, sweater, sweat­shirt, etc.

Release form: in the form of a tight-fit­ting, semi-adja­cent or free cut, with long sleeves, short or with­out them, plain or with prints, lace or knit­ted, dense or translu­cent, sum­mer and demi-sea­son, sports and roman­tic, min­i­mal­is­tic and extrav­a­gant, etc.

Prop­er­ties: due to the fea­tures of a short­ened cut, it has invig­o­rat­ing and stim­u­lat­ing prop­er­ties that can sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the over­all tone, mood, low self-esteem, cope with depres­sion and gain self-con­fi­dence, self-suf­fi­cien­cy and inner har­mo­ny.

Indi­ca­tions for use: it is rec­om­mend­ed to apply to girls of any age cat­e­go­ry, build, world­view, class and eth­nic­i­ty, life posi­tion, polit­i­cal views and oth­er beliefs who want to look styl­ish and rel­e­vant in any sit­u­a­tion.

Con­traindi­ca­tions: not found.

How to use and inter­act with oth­er items of cloth­ing: per­fect­ly inter­acts with all kinds of shirts, jack­ets or over­sized jack­ets and is com­ple­ment­ed by tight midi-length pen­cil skirts, puffy sun skirts below the knee, long floor-length skirts in a free cut or body­con, as well as a vari­ety of jeans, trousers all kinds of styles, culottes and shorts. When choos­ing skirts or trousers, it is prefer­able to opt for a mod­el with a high waist, but images with wardrobe items with a fit on the hips are also accept­able, since low waist is back at the height of fash­ion this sea­son. We com­bine low-rise mod­els with a cropped top with cau­tion, since such a com­bi­na­tion requires a chis­eled fig­ure, and besides, it looks appro­pri­ate only in an infor­mal set­ting and is unac­cept­able for an office style.

Side effects: caus­es mild depen­dence and increased atten­tion from the pub­lic, espe­cial­ly males.

Shelf life: has not gone out of fash­ion for sev­er­al sea­sons and does not lose its rel­e­vance, but only gains pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Spe­cial Notes: as a result of tests car­ried out by fash­ion­istas, it is rec­og­nized as a new clas­sic and a must-have ele­ment of the basic wardrobe.

Well?! Are there still doubters? With con­fi­dence and undis­guised plea­sure, I declare that now all our prej­u­dices and fears on the top­ic of cropped blous­es are rec­og­nized as unten­able and devoid of argu­men­ta­tion.

And con­clud­ing our long but mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion on the top­ic of the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of cropped top mod­els, I pro­pose to iden­ti­fy the most mul­ti­func­tion­al con­fig­u­ra­tion from all their vari­ety on the mar­ket.

In my sub­jec­tive, but not devoid of a cer­tain degree of exper­tise, look, a sol­id-col­ored jumper made of fine jer­sey with long sleeves and a stand-up col­lar seems to be espe­cial­ly suc­cess­ful. With such a cropped turtle­neck, you can col­lect a huge num­ber of fash­ion­able bows, and it will find its appli­ca­tion both in the cold win­ter sea­son and on a fine sum­mer day. Such a cropped turtle­neck has won an uncon­di­tion­al vic­to­ry over the reg­u­lars of the basic wom­en’s wardrobe — a black turtle­neck of clas­sic length. There­fore, we can safe­ly and mer­ci­less­ly send to a well-deserved rest, or rather in a suit­case, this, though dear­ly beloved, but rather annoy­ing piece of cloth­ing, and res­olute­ly and irrev­o­ca­bly replace it with a short­ened “broth­er”.

The young St. Peters­burg cloth­ing brand with the sonorous name SIBUMI presents, in truth, an excel­lent mod­el of a cropped turtle­neck, which deserves atten­tion due to its impec­ca­ble qual­i­ty and the most com­fort­able and thought­ful cut. The turtle­neck is made of pre­mi­um high den­si­ty Turk­ish jer­sey, which has excel­lent char­ac­ter­is­tics and exter­nal qual­i­ties. This para­me­ter is very impor­tant for those who want to look not only fash­ion­able, but also expen­sive, because the qual­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al is the deter­min­ing fac­tor in assess­ing the sta­tus of a thing. In addi­tion, the high cot­ton con­tent makes it extreme­ly com­fort­able to wear. Care­ful­ly craft­ed pat­terns pro­vide a per­fect fit on the fig­ure, empha­siz­ing its advan­tages and lev­el­ing the short­com­ings. The main detail and design accent that takes this mod­el from the cat­e­go­ry of fash­ion­able to the cat­e­go­ry of styl­ish are the elon­gat­ed sleeves, com­ple­ment­ed by cuffs with a thumb hole.

The con­cept of Shibu­mi in Japan­ese cul­ture implies a philo­soph­i­cal cur­rent in which beau­ty is per­ceived through the prism of orig­i­nal­i­ty, unique­ness and the charm of imper­fec­tion, as opposed to delib­er­ate gloss and glam­our.

Be beau­ti­ful with Sibu­mi, because your beau­ty is in your unique­ness!

“And in the end, I’ll say …” Gone are the days when a bare stom­ach caused only irri­ta­tion, hid­den aggres­sion and a storm of neg­a­tive emo­tions in soci­ety. The sit­u­a­tion does not look sur­re­al either, in which, while prepar­ing for a walk in the park, a pret­ty young lady with mag­nif­i­cent forms and, prob­a­bly, imper­fect abs, chose a short­ened long-sleeve mod­el, slight­ly open­ing the upper part of the waist, to com­ple­ment her favorite fly­ing floor-length skirt. The uni­ver­si­ty teacher does not cause con­dem­na­tion and bewil­der­ment, who com­ple­ment­ed her gray strict loose-fit­ting trouser suit with a cropped sleeve­less top. The beau­ti­ful bride of Balzac age also arous­es admi­ra­tion, choos­ing as her wed­ding dress an exquis­ite set of a snow-white satin crop top with long sleeves and a lux­u­ri­ous mer­maid sil­hou­ette skirt with a train. Do not become hostages of pub­lic opin­ion, exper­i­ment, be free, be brave, break stereo­types and move moun­tains! The brave con­quer not only the seas, but the whole world!