The season of unruly collars

What is more polite and judicious than a shirt under a sweater? Over the decades, the combination of these two pieces has become a true uniform of the good bourgeois – a meek style, so expected that we hardly even notice it anymore. And perhaps it is precisely for this reason that so many designers have tried to rethink it for the SS25 season, in accordance with the unwritten rule that even the most washed-out and bland outfit can acquire a new and unexpected life with a single deliberately out of place element. That element, in this case, is the collar of the shirt, which has been subjected to an asymmetrical styling seen throughout fashion month, with half of it exposed and almost stretched over the jacket collar and the other half hidden underneath it. The trend was initiated by Miu Miu two years ago, with the FW22 collection where various cardigans and shirt collars protruded halfway as if the models had dressed in a hurry. A touch of style that reappeared in the brand's campaigns and then again in the SS24 collection, remaining for the next two, including the latest presented in Paris, a kind of brand signature, a radical statement of nonchalance. In June last year, The Row included the quirk in the lookbook for the Spring 2025 collection, only to repeat it, with a variation, the following year when dressing Mariacarla Boscono in a turtleneck whose high, crushed, and compressed collar crumpled the shirt collar. However, in recent fashion weeks, this small detail that we might call “messy collar” has multiplied through both large and small shows.

Miu Miu SS25

Our Legacy SS25

Coperni SS25

Burberry SS25

Bottega Veneta SS25

Bally SS25

Balenciaga SS25

Eckhaus Latta SS25

Peter Do SS25

Prada SS25

Proenza Schouler SS25

Rochas SS25

Sacai SS25

Undercover SS25

Palomo Spain SS25

The presence of the messy collar has been quite varied. From Schiaparelli, for example, a rigid and asymmetrical collar, with a rounded profile, evoked in a somewhat baroque way the styling that others had applied more literally. From Peter Do, on the other hand, it was the shirts that were buttoned diagonally, and their entire construction was oriented to the right, thus bringing one of the collar points to the throat and the opening to the shoulder – something similar was done by Palomo Spain. In the Undercover men’s show, however, it was a vest positioned on a jacket with narrow lapels, and it was one of these two lapels that appeared lifted and crumpled, while in the brilliant SS25 collection by Bally, there was a bright green loden jacket whose collar looked like it had just emerged from a windstorm. However, the literal applications were more numerous: the first to mention is of course Prada, which in the SS25 men’s collection created several shirts with a wire inside that created the illusion of being lifted by the wind; a couple of these had one collar point hidden on one side and the other raised. More subtle, in New York and Toyo, Collina Strada and Anrealage, where the side of a jacket was pushed down and slightly to the side to expose half of the collar, while in its latest lookbook, Studio Nicholson simply lifted the collar of the shirt above that of the sweater and wrapped it around the neck. From Proenza Schouler, on the other hand, some looks included shirts with half of the collar raised but without layering, while from Balenciaga there was practically only layering, with the collar of a black and white checkered shirt long enough to emerge entirely from a composite look.

The Row Spring 2025

Studio Nicholson Winter 2024

Wales Bonner SS25

Schiaparelli SS25

Ganni SS25

Anrealage SS25

Daniel W. Fletcher SS25

Collina Strada SS25

Alainpaul SS25

In all the other occasions, from Bottega Veneta to Our Legacy, from Wales Bonner to Coperni, the undisciplined collars have returned as a curious recurrence to adorn looks that could not be more different from each other. All united by the pleasant, insolent note of a studied disorder to disturb an otherwise uniform look. That of the interpretation and representation of chaos has been a craze that has run underground in fashion in recent times: perhaps through luxurious bags overflowing and loaded with charms and trinkets; or through asymmetries and unusual pairings like, from Loewe, a flowered dress and a pair of boat shoes; but also finding new ways to wear old clothes, tying shirts and sweaters to transform them into bodices, converting leather jackets into evening dresses and so on. As usual, the runway screams what the street will whisper – and so it can be said that if perhaps the looks more outlandish that we have seen on the runway will translate, through styling and collections in stores, into a simple detail (like, indeed, a collar out of place) that manages to express that sense of disarray that is the true and absolute trend of the just presented season.