The return of the business shirt

The fashion industry is known for its capriciousness, but 2025 has been an especially volatile year, with a litany of high-profile creative directors changing places. From January through to the summer months, there have been new designers installed at Bottega Veneta, Chanel, Gucci, Balenciaga, Maison Margiela, Jil Sander, Versace, Marni – the list goes on.

But the most resonant move was that of industry darling Jonathan Anderson, from Loewe to Dior, and his debut show, men’s Spring/Summer 2026, was perhaps the most hotly anticipated catwalk presentation of the past decade. In the end, amid all the tumult, Anderson chose to build his inaugural collection around one piece of classic menswear: the simple, blue-and-white-striped business shirt.

In various guises, striped button-ups – in lightweight poplin, rather than thick Oxford cotton – popped up under preppy ‘repp’ ties (also striped), or peeking out from beneath slubby wool blazers, or paired with matching boxer shorts. They even made it onto the show’s front row, where the likes of Robert Pattinson and Josh O’Connor dutifully scrunched their crisp collars out of shape, as per Anderson’s preferred styling method.

Just a few days before, in Milan, resurgent British brand Dunhill had put the striped shirt at the heart of its collection, too, though the collars all laid as intended. In more of a nod to the riverbank than the Square Mile, creative director Simon Holloway broadened the stripe to a deckchair gauge, and used it in shirts that splayed out at the neck to make space for a neckerchief, and even worn neatly beneath bow ties and tuxedo jackets.

‘The blue-and-white-striped shirt is a classic because it takes you away from plain blue or white, but still looks timeless,’ says Luke Sweeney, co-founder of tailoring brand Thom Sweeney, where the brand’s archetypal point-collar shirt is available in a simple ‘Bengal’ stripe. Named for a regiment of the British Indian Army, the narrow stripe helps to give visual texture to otherwise simple outfits, and looks especially good with navy tailoring, adds Sweeney.

For inspiration, Sweeney’s co-founder Thom Whiddett points to financier Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987), who opted to finesse his striped ‘power’ shirting with a contrast collar (and in doing so, created the de facto ‘banker’ look). A faithful rendition of that shirt – known as the ‘Gekko’ shirt – is available at Jermyn Street’s Turnbull & Asser, and offered to ‘any high-flying city gent with a fondness for cinema’.

For something a little less boisterous, the head of tailoring brand Husbands Paris, where the striped, contrast collar has been softened, in line with the maison’s sense of chic 1970s glamour. The blue-and-white stripe is flecked with a little black, and the collar is fuller, designed to sit beneath an extra-wide suit lapel.

Proof, perhaps, that the humble blue-and-white stripe is as timeless as the collared shirt itself, and that even in this ever-changing landscape, there are sartorial constants. Crumpled collar or not.