Take Connor Storrie’s recent Saint Laurent campaign, which includes a video snippet of the Heated Rivalry hunk, shot from the shoulders up, bopping along to Milli Vanilli in a shirt whose collar tilts gravity-defyingly upwards. In images from the same shoot, Storrie models a bicep-hugging crewneck sweater and a butch leather jacket, the collar of his striped button-up yanked askew like it was just body-checked into the glass.
These are not the brash, haughtily popped collars of a Bruce Weber-era Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. They’re a more self-conscious affectation, a winking signifier that endeavors to telegraph a careless, “this old thing?” energy. (I get the allure. The collar on this $1,200 Phoebe Philo shirt—cut to remain in a state of half up, half down homeostasis—is so ingenious, it almost makes you forgive the price.)
What, exactly, do these independent-minded collars say about the state of getting dressed right now? If I had to hazard a guess, they have a lot to do with the wretched, relentless pursuit of “personal style,” that reliable albatross of the extremely online fashion crowd. No outfit looks quite right unless it’s ever-so-slightly wrong, designers like Bellotti and Rider seem to be suggesting, whether it’s a collar end left exposed or a shirt sleeve left flapping in the wind. That the once-anonymous stylists who help articulate those ideas on the runway are now superstars in their own right is no coincidence.
It’s too harsh to call the flyaway collar irredeemably contrived, and too much of a stretch to call it 2026’s answer to the Ralph Tuck. But its weird ubiquity points to a fundamental irony in the trend-flattening age of the internet: If everybody employs the same handful of styling quirks to communicate their sui generis swag, how personal can their style really be?
Rushing to work last week, I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of a parked car. My shirt collar was losing a battle with the wind, and one end had flopped lazily over the lapel of my suit. It looked cool. It looked right. I tucked it back where it belonged.