The Cropped Jacket Comeback

I've never been an early adopter when it comes to trends. I watch, I wait, I quietly judge, and invariably cave. It happened with the baggy jeans – I resisted for what felt like years, finally tried them, and now I love them.

The cropped jacket is next. And if – like me – you've already surrendered to the wider leg and find the proportions of baggy trousers and a baggy jacket work against you in a way that's quite hard to recover from, you need to try the cropped jacket. Even if you don't have a J.Lo waist, it nips everything in, defines where you are, and suddenly the whole outfit looks intentional.

What I love most about it is how completely it moves through a life. It goes over leggings and a sweatshirt on the school run, thrown over jeans on a Saturday, or worn with a skirt to the theatre. It has a quiet adaptability that most pieces don't.

This season there's no shortage of beautiful options. Witchery is doing it with real polish – considered cuts, beautiful fabrics, the kind of quality that justifies the spend. Country Road brings its usual understated elegance to the silhouette – clean lines, wearable colours, nothing that tries too hard. Zara moves fastest when it comes to trend – they're already well stocked and the prices make it easy to take a chance on something new. Mango sits in that sweet spot between accessible and genuinely stylish – reliably good tailoring without the designer price tag. And Superbalist is where you go when you want something with more edge – unexpected textures, bolder proportions, labels you won't find everywhere else.

Trust me on this one – I waited long enough for both of us.