When it’s hot—and it certainly is climate-emergency-hot this summer—we tend to veer towards less fabric, more skin. We debate how many bare butt cheeks have graced the subway seats before us. T-shirts are in utero-sized. Our shoes are thonged or soleless, semi-barefoot.
This season, though, has seen t-shirts lengthen and sleeves elongate—it’s bye-bye baby tee, hello schlubby shirt summer.
Take Zendaya, for example, who experimented with method dressing and managed to beat the heatwave concurrently in a vintage, XXL Spider-Man t-shirt on the red carpet. Paired with those trusty white Louboutin pumps, it felt cheeky, easy, and breezy. Alexa Demie wore an oversized “I <3 Rosalia” merch t-shirt to the pop star’s Los Angeles show, paired with black track pants and vintage adidas boxing boots to add to the sporty, relaxed aesthetic. (Celebrities stanning each other is a new style frontier.)
Jennifer Lawrence, an acolyte of New York cool-girl ease, paired her graphic tee with similarly trending Bermuda shorts to run errands in the city. Alexa Chung has been capturing her daily fits on her doorbell cam: many see her in the same outfit formula, with an oversized top over a silky midi skirt. A big-tee-little-skirt combo also feels very Zoe Kravitz in Saint Laurent street-style-coded. The womenswear runways have also incorporated looser, less body-skimming forms: at Pierpaolo Piccioli’s spring 2026 Balenciaga debut, for one, sinewy big shirts were elevated with flowing skirts. Big attitude, bold silhouette, bigger tees have long been a staple at Entire Studios, Vaquera, Willy Chavarria, and Luar. There really isn’t a one-size-fits-all way to wear one.
My colleague Max Berlinger has already clocked the move away from “slutty little shorts” for men into flowing, voluminous, bottoms. Those same sensibilities apply here: there’s a nostalgic quality to an oversized tee, and there’s a confident, renegade-feeling that comes with wearing something outsized—especially in an era where society demands we make ourselves ever-smaller. And some of the strongest oversized silhouettes still come from menswear, too. Despite a slimmer look emerging from the spring 2027 menswear shows on the runways of Dior and Prada, those looser, streetwear-inspired shapes hold fast. A breezy, billowing tee—maybe a little damp with sea salt or dappled with ice-cream—just feels like summer.
One staple top that emerged across the previous fall and winter seasons was the polo shirt: worn by Hailey Bieber and Rihanna, and shown in collections by Miu Miu (alongside aprons) and Paloma Wool (in ice-cream colours), as fashion embraced a more preppy feel and brands experimented with ideas around workwear. The polo top denotes a sense of put-togetherness, with any sense of stuffiness softened when styled with feminine skirts or toughened up with denim and leather. London designer Talia Byre bridged the gap between both silhouettes with her extra-large, striped polo shirt-dress with its plunging v-neck. As we move into warmer temperatures and vacation time, we’re freed from the structure of the polo and the notions of uniform dressing—the big t-shirt is the big blank canvas for an exciting, all-to-play-for few months.
There’s also an expanse on a big tee to show some personality—literally. There’s been a resurgence in vintage novelty t-shirts, merch tops, and of course, soccer jerseys, and bigger t-shirts just give you more room to signal your tastes, your interests, your team. Practically speaking, too, all that extra room provides some great airflow to keep you cool, and makes for easy layering—as seen on Jennifer Lawrence, whose styling of an extra-large t-shirt follows the same silhouettes she enjoys in the colder months with skants and multi-functional shirts.
What more modern schlubby shirt designs (look to Victoria Beckham, Nanushka, Tove, or excellent new basics brand Saint Sirène’s boyfriend shirt) offer today is a sense of refinement its past iterations didn’t have: necklines are structured and not stretched, shoulders dropped, sleeves wide and falling close to the elbow, boxier cut rather than tunic-like: there’s an emphasis on intentional volume that’s in dialogue with the rest of a look. Then again, you can never go wrong with vintage: look to Amsterdam’s nhỏgirl for a fun and varied curation of vintage logo tees and how to style them, or London’s Jerks (beloved by Lorde and Alexander Skarsgård) for a library of decades-spanning, subculture-hopping tees.
I might not be letting go of my clingy shirred Super YaYa top or Climax bookstore baby tee just yet, but I’m open to this easy, unbothered spirit of a schlubby shirt summer—what say you, Brandy Melville?
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
