Gather your items and shove them in various pants pockets: cargo pants are back — and now, they’re surprisingly chic.
In January, Jennifer Lopez strutted around New York City wearing beige woolen cargo pants in a flowing, wide leg style — a sophisticated twist from the heavy pocket version with a severe taper that she wore in 2002.
While the utilitarian trousers would have once conjured images of stiff camouflaged fabric, the latest versions are free-flowing and feature a wider leg that’s more pretty than practical.
It’s “a nostalgia for the styles from back in the early 2000s, that Gen Z tends to be gravitating towards,” Liz Teich, a New York-based stylist told The Post. “They’re all going back to the photos for inspiration and old movies and TV shows.”
Female R&B and pop groups — like TLC, the Spice Girls and J.Lo — made the cargo cool in the aughts. Now the pants are back, with brands like Phillip Lim and Fendi featuring the style in recent their Resort 2023 campaigns.
“It’s really trickling down from high end high fashion down all the way to mainstream,” Teich said. “I even saw the other day that Banana Republic was [styling them] as a work pant.”
The cargo pant is moving in a more sophisticated direction, with Teich explaining the recent iteration of the utilitarian pant has been designed in a more “innovative way” than the traditional baggy cargo pant we saw in the early 2000s.
Advertisement
Advertisement
“Rather than an army fatigue type of style pattern [we’re] now seeing it in everything from silk to wool and evening wear, as well as a lot of denim which is really cool,” Teich said.
“We’re definitely seeing it in newer ways than just like army fatigue type style pants, and I definitely think we wore it more of like a low rise pant [in the 2000s],” she continued. “Luckily, we’re having a variety of high rise and low rise this season.”
