So the good news is that the hero piece of the new season is in your wardrobe already. The bad news is that you are not going to believe me when I say you should be wearing it to work or out to dinner. The check shirt – last seen hanging around the coffee machine in the sixth-form common room or shopping for drill bits in B&Q – is having a fashion moment.
Kate Moss made only one catwalk appearance last year, and she wore a check shirt. At the Bottega Veneta spring/summer 2023 show at Milan fashion week, out sauntered Mossy in a shirt of sky blue crosshatched with sea green, the cuffs casually, unevenly flipped back, low-slung blue jeans and a white ribbed vest. With her centre-parted hair and little gold hoop earrings, the look evoked her iconic 1990s Calvin Klein campaign era.
Look, I know it sounds trite and lazy to bang on about an “Instagram moment” as if posting a picture means anything, but it is an undeniable fact that the instant when everyone at a show reaches for their phones is the same thing as the instant when a football crowd bellows or a dancefloor starts jumping. At a moment of awe, these days, out come the smartphones. A little depressing, perhaps, but we are where we are.
The check shirt vibe is pure rough diamond. It is plain-speaking, but not boring. It has an anti-bling kind of messaging, which swings two ways. It can do wholesome and hard-working, outdoorsy and woodsmoke scented, but it can also be counter-cultural and brooding with cigarette burns.
It is 1980s LL Bean catalogue man but it is also Daisy in The Dukes of Hazzard, her shirt knotted above a tiny pair of white shorts. It is Marlon Brando, pure muscle as New Jersey dockworker Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, but also skinny Kurt Cobain on stage with Nirvana in the early 1990s. It had a whole lot going for it even before Kate Moss gave it a Milan fashion week makeover.
Right now, it fits with the vaguely rustic, hiking-adjacent weekend aesthetic making a land grab for what used to be called streetwear. The hip young gunslingers walking their French bulldogs in the parks of east London are as likely to be wearing hiking boots and fleeces as they are trainers and shiny puffers.
How to wear the check shirt and make it fashion, though, that’s the question. Most of us cannot hope to recreate what Kate Moss wears and expect to look like Kate Moss, more’s the pity. Looking effortless is not the same thing as simply not making an effort. To make the check shirt work, you need to dress it up a little. A leather jacket and some chunky loafers elevates it nicely, you will notice. Or flip your layers around, and wear it as a shacket, open over a ribbed polo neck in a bright, contrasting colour. Brushing your hair and wearing earrings or a chunky necklace will help clarify that you are wearing the check shirt as a fashion item, and have not been caught out wearing your pyjama top.
What you don’t need to do is throw money at the problem. That Bottega trophy piece turned out to be an ingenious piece of trompe l’oeil, in butter-soft leather, hand-painted to look like flannel. Don’t ask the price; you don’t want to know. Instead, have a rummage in your wardrobe, or your flatmate’s wardrobe, or your dad’s. If you want to push the boat out, £15 at your local secondhand store should do it. Diamond in the rough, remember? So go dig around.
Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Beauty Works and Kiehls. Model: Hanna at Milk. Shirt: Rails. Jacket: H&M. Trousers: Jigsaw
