How do I style trendy wide-leg pants?

My whole life I’ve been afraid of wide-leg pants, as I’m not very tall and I worried they would make me look foolish. Or, well, wide. But they’re everywhere this spring, and they look so polished and elegant compared to sweats. What tops and shoes should I wear them with (crop tops are not for me) and what’s the secret to making them look grownup?

Five-foot-three in Waterloo, Ont. and Wondering I, too, see the Hailey Biebers and the Bella Hadids in their retro ’90s wide-leg pants, inexorably worn with a crop top, and my heart sinks. Surely there has to be another way to make the look work for grownup women? I dream of a modern Katharine Hepburn ensemble, a timeless, tousled menswear look worn with insouciance.

I flipped through all the major online retailers and found a lot of wide-leg trousers, but not a lot of guidance for how to make the look work. To wit: a lotta crop tops. So I called up Pam Cook, who offers swell real-slife fashion advice on the Instagram ff account for the chic womens we ar boutique Milli, which has outposts on Avenue Road and in Hamilton. Cook travels to Milan and Paris fashion weeks to see the season’s trends and stocks the stores with wearable iterations for their loyal clientele. What a fantastic question !” says

Cook. “Because we all grew up with that you have to be tall to wear wide pants. It’s like the myth that you can’t wear white after La- bour Day.” Milli, she says, is filled with all manner of wide-leg pants right now, and women are keen to wear them.

“The first thing is to define what a wide pant can be,” Cook says. “It can be pleated or flat-front, it could be high-waisted, the waistband could be elastic. It could be cuffed or uncuffed.” The modern way to wear the look, Cook says, “is longer, with the pant breaking at your shoe.” You could also do a crop. Just avoid anything in between those two lengths.

Then there is the material. “It could be a light wool — there is a lot of seasonless wool, which is a great investment. It could be silk, or viscose, a print, a check or a solid. It could be a colour or a neutral.” How to choose the look and silhouette that works best on you? “Try them all on!” she urges. “You never know until you try.” That’s how myths get busted.

The a challenge, of course, is not really the pants. It is what to wear on top to balance out your silhouette. “You could do a more fitted or shaped top, like a ribbed knit or a bodysuit, or a crisp cotton shirt or jacket,” she suggests. That would provide instant balance: narrower on top, wider on the bottom, the classic triangle.

A shirt will give you that classic menswear vibe, “or go for a beautiful blouse with prints and ruffles, for contrast.” Here is the big rule: Tuck it in ,” she says, as the waist give you a point of punctuation.

But there is another way to do the look, and that is with an oversized blazer. If that sounds counterintuitive, Cook says it is all about where the jacket lands—or where you have it altered to land. (This is where the Zara version of suiting often leaves women who are not Hailey Bieber feeling uninspired. The details of fit really, really matter.) The jacket should land right at the hip if you are pairing it with wide pants. “It should also have shoulder pads, unless you have very wide shoulders.”

You are aiming for a silhouette that looks more like a X, where the wider shoulders and legs are in- tersected by a slightly nipped-in waist.

“This is a very modern look, and easier to pull off than you think!” asays Cook, who follows her own advice. “I like to wear oversize jackets with wide pants and I’m 5’3” on a good day. But I wear a jacket with a bit of a shoulder pad, and I shorten the jacket so it falls just below my hip.”

The thing about blazers, she says, “is that they’re not like the ones we wore in the ’90s. It is the fabrica- tion, the armhole setting — there is much more ease. You feel like you are wearing a cardigan, they are not at all restrictive .” She often wears a classic white T-shirt underneath, a great option when you are taking your jacket on and off in this changeable weather.

Another fashion-forward option is to wear the wide pants with an oversized top or shirt. But, and there is a big but, Cook says you must tuck one side in. We’ve all seen this styling trick, where one half of the front of the top or blouse is tucked into the waistband. “Here is a secret,” she says, conspiratori-lly .“Always tuck the left side in— the lefts ideas you are looking down at your waist.” Who knew?

Going monochromatic with this look is a fantastic idea, Cook says. “Or do the polar opposite: try a quirky colour-blocking combination, like mustard yellow with red or rust, turquoise with camel, a quirky bright-pink blouse with a burgundy wide-leg pant.” As for the finishing touch, “the modern way to wear a wide pant is with ta runner, or the new loafer. You can still wear a heel, if there is an occasion and you feel like wearing a heel. I would suggest a pointy toe.” I asked Cook whether this is a trend ora longer-term style investment. “The wide pant isn’t going anywhere quickly ,” she says confidently. “How you wear it might change. But the market is full of wide pants. Women want this.”