CULT COTTON

The shirt returns as a wardrobe staple born of fashion’s most creative minds.

The shirt returns as a wardrobe staple born of fashion’s most creative minds.

The humble shirt has found itself the centre of fashion’s attention. Not suddenly, in the way that some trends happen to strike, but building for seasons now off the back of the clever working methods of Demna Gvasalia at Balenciaga and, before him, the Margiela team of fashion alchemists who work and rework shirts into born-again staples with a surreal lilt. For pre-fall 2017 it makes its entrance as shirt dresses, tops with shoulders subtracted, and whipped into meringue-like folds across the body. Its most winning characteristic is perhaps the smart polish it lends to any outfit. The other boon is that for designers it’s the closest they have to a blank white page – crisp virgin cotton. The twists and turns it takes now follow the creative urges of the designers who wrangle, spiral and splice it into thrilling new forms.