IS IT TIME TO CONSIDER THE NINETIES’ TRICKIEST TREND?
The tank top has been reimagined. Just keep it sleek with a blazer, says Stephen Doig
Ryan Gosling’s roll call of red carpet attire has always been flawless and individual – breezy pyjama tops in Cannes, ruffled shirts at the Oscars – which makes his most recent outing all the more noteworthy. Stepping on to a jetty at the Venice film festival, the usually impeccable Mr Gosling donned a tank top by Lacoste. Not the sporty gym variety, you understand, but its knitted, cosy, golf club-going brother, worn with jeans and a T-shirt. It’s a choice – sometimes termed a “sweater vest” – straight from the darkest corners of the Nineties wardrobe, which has crept on to the most revered of catwalks too, at Gucci, Raf Simons and Prada. Is it time for a renaissance?
The knitted tank top is a strange hybrid, a sweater without sleeves, worn – if you’re particularly wedded to looking like a Hollywood starlet in 1996 – with a T-shirt, or more formally, with a shirt. The former is Brad Pitt in said year, on the arm of then-beau Gwyneth Paltrow, or Chandler Bing in Friends.
The latter is golfing dad territory, the stuff of retro Seventies catalogues advertising flared playsuits and bell bottoms. Neither has a particular affinity with how men dress today.
Which makes the resurgence of this unlikely knitted anomaly all the more curious, but a wholly unscientific scroll through the best men’s e-tailers shows it in myriad forms, from £1,000 versions in conceptual cuts (courtesy of cult Belgian menswear powerhouse Simons) to neat black numbers. It may be an Anglified reaction to the rise of the knitted tank’s Italian brother, the gilet. This item has risen in the sartorial ranks – aided by its prominence in the continental wardrobe – as an informed item for trans-seasonal dressing, in that it adds a layer without being cumbersome, and adds dynamism to a shirt and blazer.
Perhaps the tank top can do the same; certainly in practical terms it adds warmth and insulation while allowing movement and breathability. As we head into autumn it can act as a happy medium between outerwear and a lightweight shirt. Perhaps the easiest “in” with the tank top is to steer clear of the baggy, sagging proportions of the Nineties (Gosling’s version seems oddly oversized) in favour of sleeker options worn with sharp trousers and smart shoes, and do as those e-tail sites do and wear it with a blazer, so the sleeves don’t show. Doing so will make said blazer less formal, and act as an autumn cover-up without the heft. Whether the other questionable tropes of Nineties style – rimless glasses, bootcut jeans – will make a resurgence on the red carpet remains to be seen.