Brown Cropped Pants Outfits for Warm Fall Weather

It's so helpful to have at least a few warm weather items that give you an autumnal vibe for the summer-to-fall transition season. Of course, depending on your climate, it may remain warm rather far into (or the entirety of!) fall. But even those of us who live in a place where we full well know that Winter Is Coming need to deal with that gap between the start of September and the arrival of fall weather.

I recently discussed how I use color to transition to the new season despite the weather and shared a few outfits where I used a mix of summer and fall for late summer outfits. Today I want to highlight a particular piece in my wardrobe that is a summer-to-fall transition champ!

I purchased these lightweight brown capri pants (which are indeed very wrinkled in this photo!) on sale for $9.76 from Christopher & Banks in September 2020. While retailers were making room for true fall merchandise, I was able to snag a perfect item for September weather.

I wore these brown capri pants twice last week! Outfit #1 is a WFH look that has two other CJ Banks items as well: a floral/bird print top with 3/4 sleeves (as shown in this bird print outfit round-up) and a sandstone coral knit jacket. Although there is no brown in the print, brown is just a darker version of the beige that's there, so it feels cohesive enough. I used my common trick of adding my brown leather flats and brown leather earrings to the outfit to make for 3 bits of brown.

Outfit #1: OOTD 9/8/22

This tan ombré scarf made a showing in my 3 summer pants post in an OOTD from late July. It's just a great color and weight for the latter parts of summer and early parts of fall. A statement scarf can also be a great "third piece" when it's warm enough to take off your outer layer (as I did around lunch time with this outfit) or in place of an outer layer.

I also wore the same DIY bracelet stack as I did in the late July outfit with this scarf. One of my favorite things about these bracelet sets is that I can mix and match the individual pieces to my heart's content, but I can also just grab an entire set that I designed to wear together. For an outfit based on brown, sandstone, beige, and gold, this set was an easy choice.

Two days later, I wore this weekend look (though coincidentally, I was also WFH on a project with a tough deadline that day). Once again, brown is not present in the floral shirt's print, but I can more readily wear brown with random things than I can black. I don't know whether this is due to my personal coloring working more easily with brown or something about the starkness of black or what. In any case, I thought wearing the brown capris + brown flats would be a nice way to bring this spring-colored floral shirt into fall.

Outfit #2: 9/10/22

I wore a green-teal knit tank underneath to bring out the darkest color in the shirt's print. My layered necklace included a gold/pearl/seed bead necklace, a gold/crystal tennis necklace from my mom (which is on trend this year so wear 'em if you've got 'em), my familiar DIY paperclip chain + Zork lantern necklace, the ubiquitous brown/rose gold sloth (hiding a bit), and the simple gold tassel necklace I've worn 72 times since December 2014 because it's so often just the right piece to add a vertical element.

My bracelet set is 2 DIY paper bead bracelets, 2 DIY stone bead bracelets, and a gold bracelet from Amazon. I created this set specifically to contain a nice array of fall colors (e.g., gold, rust, brown, sage, dark green) to coordinate with outfits in these warmer hues.

This weekend outfit from last June (i.e., spring-to-summer transition in St Paul) would also work well for late summer/early fall. I started with this Art Deco print silk scarf because I wanted to experiment with combining black (top) and brown (capri pants) in an outfit. Then I used the road map styling technique to select a sky blue cardigan and gold flats. For a more traditional fall color scheme, I could simply substitute a teal cardigan for the blue (you can see the teal in the scarf at the upper left of the photo...yes, I tied the scarf so that the light blue was front and center in this blue cardigan version).

Would you be at all surprised to learn that I designed this DIY bracelet set to coordinate with this outfit? I really liked the idea of an all-neutral set in shades of brown, black, and gold. I had not initially considered wearing the mixed metal spacer bracelet (the center one) with this set, but I LOVE how it works! Now it's officially a member of the set.

Because it's September, I pulled 3 other September OOTD featuring these brown capris from my outfit archives. One thing you'll notice is that I wear the brown leather flats with them in each outfit. While I enjoy mixing and matching my items to create different outfits, that doesn't mean I have to start completely from scratch each time. When you've identified pieces that work very well together (for example, a Pleasing Pairing or a beauty bundle/accessory set), it just makes sense to use them as building blocks for your outfit. In this case, I love how the two items share that deep, cool brown color, and it's nice that the pointy-toed flats add a visually elongating element to the leg line to help offset the cropped pants.

The linen Lands End top that's my summer stand-alone favorite

Teal with rust & brown for the win

An all-neutral outfit gets interest from texture and print

And if you like brown, there's no reason not to experiment with a monochromatic outfit! Here J52 demonstrates a sleek version of head-to-toe brown with pops of pink. Just gorgeous! Note how the rich brown tones bring out her chocolate eyes.

Brown Polish rabbit

Do you have a September dressing strategy? Do you wear brown? Do you wear brown and black together?

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