Capri pants — those truncated trousers last seen on Carrie Bradshaw during the original run of “Sex and the City” — are back.
The favorites of Hollywood legend Audrey Hepburn have acquired a new legion of fans, who prize them for their easy summer vibes.
Celebrities Kendall Jenner, Anne Hathaway and Emily Ratajkowski have all stepped out in calf-length leggings recently, and Hailey Bieber was spotted in a polka-dotted pair. Nearly every brand offers its version of the style, from Gap to Reformation to Jacquemus, whose stretchy capris retail for $790.
Those trending now harken back to the streamlined midcentury styles — sleek, black and often in stretchier materials.
But the pants have their haters, mainly millennials who lived through capris’ last heyday in the early 2000s — when they were basically shortened versions of the era’s low-rise pants, often with tacky embellishments like sparkly embroidery or cargo pockets.
‘I hate [capri] leggings with the fury of 1,001 suns!’
“They look wonderful on Audrey Hepburn … but I hate the idea of them on myself with the fury of a thousand suns,” Elisa Mala, a millennial travel writer who lives in Staten Island and did not want to give her age, recently told The Post.
“And I hate [capri] leggings with the fury of 1,001 suns!” she added.
Becca Lyn, a 42-year-old registered nurse who lives in Chelsea, told The Post: “When I look at pictures of myself in capris from when they [were] in fashion, I have only deep regret.”
“I find it very upsetting,” said Megan Reynolds, an editor at Dwell and author of the new book “Like: A History of the World’s Most Hated and Misunderstood Word.”
“At my age, which is 42, the fact that they’re coming back makes me feel old,” she told The Post. “I also never thought they were flattering on anybody.”
Even men have strong opinions.
“The capri pant flatters almost no one,” said Robert Ossant, fashion historian and co-author of the forthcoming “The Art of Couture Embroidery.”
“It’s the sartorial equivalent of breakup-bangs,” he added, questioning the claim that they were “back” at all.
“Brands like to push the opposite of whatever is trending — in this case, wide leg pants — to make consumers switch their entire wardrobe up,” he said. “I will add, supermodels in the south of France pull it off, and that’s the main reason capri pants still hold some appeal.”
Sometimes called pedal pushers, toreador pants or clam diggers, capris emerged in the 1940s. A German designer named Sonja de Lennart claimed she invented the style, but while she may have given capris their name, Daniel James Cole, an adjunct professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology and co-author of the book “The History of Modern Fashion,” told The Post that they were in the ether.
Celebrities such as Katharine Hepburn and Amelia Earhart helped push the idea of women in pants in the 1930s. But during World War II, American women ditched their dresses en masse, suiting up in jeans or coveralls to work in the factories while the men fought in Europe.
Capris, Cole said, were a response to the postwar hyper-feminine styles of Christian Dior — a way for gals to still don trousers without appearing too threatening to the men returning from the front.
“They were sometimes without the slits [at the bottom]. They were sometimes with some sort of detail down towards the hem of them. But it was an overarching trend coming into the ’50s,” Cole said.
And they exploded when Hollywood stars like Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly adopted them.
Hepburn made the pants her signature, donning them in her Oscar-winning turn as a rebellious princess in 1953’s “Roman Holiday” and again as a beatnik bookseller-turned-model in 1957’s “Funny Face.” In 1961, Mary Tyler Moore subverted the role of the subservient TV housewife when she appeared on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” in a knit turtleneck, ballet flats and black capris — topped off with her insouciant flipped hairdo.
“They were a symbol of youth,” Cole said, and younger cultures would resuscitate them throughout the decades, from post-punkers like the B-52s in the 1980s to pop stars like Britney Spears in the late 1990s.
It was that youthful mien that led 23-year-old fashion student Emma Bennett to recently purchase a pair of black and white polka-dotted pedal pushers from web retailer Cider.
“I was definitely going for a ’60s vibe when I got them,” the Parsons student told The Post, adding that she was inspired by Elle Fanning’s bohemian ensembles in the 2024 Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown.”
“Something with that movie really captivated me,” she said. “I thought about it for weeks and weeks after watching it. I thought getting more clothes that could look like they were from the ’60s would make me closer to it.”
Forty-eight-year-old stylist Julie Matos, who owns three pairs, has loved them since she was a kid.
“I remember going on a shopping trip with the Girl Scouts when I was young and buying my first pair at Macy’s,” the Chinatown resident recalled to The Post.
She recently dug out a pair of Ports 1961 capris she had bought over a decade ago. She has since purchased two more pairs, including a “sexy, fun” sheer option with lace trim.
“I figure I can show my legs a little more,” she said. “Like, ‘Look, I’m 48, and I’m still bringing it.’”
Toronto-based writer Isabel Slone, who chronicles her fashion obsessions on her newsletter Freak Palace, said that a month ago, she was “gripped by this feverish desire to own capri pants — specifically a pair of vintage Emilio Pucci leggings.”
“I immediately saw myself wearing them with a baggy, oversized, button-down top and maybe a headscarf,” said the 35-year-old.
“It’s hard to think of a more glamorous image than the one of Marilyn Monroe wearing pedal pushers with a tight sweater and a scarf tied around her head,” she said. “It’s an image that contains this nonchalant elegance and authenticity that I think a lot of people are striving for today.”
Angela Betancourt, 43, initially balked when she heard capris were trending once again. The communications exec frequently wore them in her 20s, until she saw a picture of herself in them.
“I looked really weird,” the Springfield, Massachusetts, mom recalled. “The photo did not match at all the image I had in my head of how I looked.”
She got rid of all her capris, except for a pink linen pair with embroidered lace trim that she scored on sale at Bloomingdale’s nearly two decades ago.
“I paid $125, which was a lot of money at the time, but they were just really unique,” she told The Post.
This summer, with the silhouette trending once again, Betancourt took the pink pants out of her closet.
She was surprised that they not only fit, but that she loved them.
“I had so much fun wearing them,” she said.
“It’s funny: the last time I wore capris, ‘Sex and the City’ was on, and now my girls are back, and I’m wearing capris again,” she said. “It just feels right.”
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