The gay striped shirt as we know it, though, seems to take closer cues from its later iteration as a 1950s bowling shirt – a defining look of a period so easily romanticised through a stereotypically gay lens – by way of kitsch aesthetics, a rapidly mobilised pop culture and well, Grease. After all, the decade marked a turning point in mens fashion whereby new items like this (appropriately named) “ camp collar shirt” symbolised a rejection of rigid Victorian dress codes and in doing so, came to embody “an early contestation of gender norms”. This style first appeared in the 1930s – an important point, according to Jay McCauley Bowstead, a lecturer at the London College of Fashion and author of Menswear Revolution. Meanwhile, as the press team at fashion search platform Lyst tells VICE, searches for “men's striped shirts” continue to increase 52 percent month-on-month and online views have more than tripled for shirts labelled “retro” and “short-sleeved”. Sitting on a dark leather sofa with his elbows. Teenage boy with shoulder length hair, shirtless, wearing blue jeans and black sneakers.
The shirt's recent popularity isn’t just conjecture – Zara, Topman and H&M are all selling various iterations. Powerful muscular man shirtless posing with his son in the studio with red and blue smoke.
