How Men’s Dress Shirts Became Cool Again

After a decade of T-shirts, men are learning to love the dress shirt again.

Fuelled by return-to-office mandates, the revival of prep and a 1980s Armani-esque slick aesthetic, the number of men’s dress shirt styles in stock online in the US and UK reached a four-year high, jumping 37 percent year over year in February 2025, according to retail insights firm Edited. On TikTok, weekly views of videos that feature men’s dress shirts increased more than 1,000 percent from September 2024 to February 2025, according to data analytics platform Trendalytics. Celebrities, too, are embracing the dress shirt: Rapper A$AP Rocky, a street-style fixture who was instrumental in mainstreaming streetwear, is as likely to be spotted in a dress shirt and tie these days as a logo tee. At the same time, they’re appearing on the runways from luxury houses like Saint Laurent and Tom Ford, where Haider Ackermann included a range of two-tone dress shirts and Windsor-knotted ties in his debut collection.

But today’s button-up shirts have come a long way from the flavourless office requirement they were at the dawn of the 21st Century. Current iterations aren’t the garishly bright colours of the late aughts, when menswear aficionados were peacocking in shrunken suits and clunky brogues. For starters, the preferred silhouette is looser and more louche than the form-fitting staples of the past. Plus, consumers haven’t fully abandoned the casual approach to style that took hold during the pandemic, and prefer dress shirts that can be paired as easily with a suit as with denim and a leather bomber jacket.

The trend is benefitting everyone from established brands like Ralph Lauren and Brunello Cuccinelli, which have roots in selling menswear staples, to rising labels like Le Alfré, NN07 and Mfpen, which are offering versatile options such as those with shorter hems that look even better untucked, utility pockets or oversized cuts that can double as light jackets.

“The glorification or romanticisation of old Ivy League-inspired styles and prep coming back led to this modern retelling of it, where the stuffiness of these institutions where these styles originated has been taken out,” said Jian DeLeon, men’s fashion director at Nordstrom.

What the Consumer Wants

While they may be embracing button-up shirts, today’s menswear consumers, particularly younger generations that are coming into their spending power, aren’t looking to simply don officewear cosplay. The desire for dress shirts with versatile styling options also falls into a broader trend of fashion-obsessed men looking to shape their personal style, DeLeon said.

Copenhagen-based menswear label NN07, which had a viral moment in 2024 when Jeremy Allen White wore its $650 multi-coloured checked wool jacket in the hit Hulu series “The Bear,” is seeing customers size up when buying its button-up shirts, said Gustav Emil Loft, the brand’s public relations manager. The oversized silhouette offers a wider range of use cases as men look to accommodate their entire lifestyle — think going from the office to a bar or a weekend stroll in the park. A roomier fit can be tucked into a suit or worn untucked as a jacket with a ribbed tank top underneath, wide-leg jeans and cowboy boots or loafers.

“The menswear wardrobe is like Lego pieces where you can put it together in this prescribed way, but it’s actually more fun when you try different things and see what works for yourself,” DeLeon added.

With the renewed enthusiasm for dress shirts, shoppers are gravitating toward iconic menswear labels. In early March, 90 percent of Brunello Cucinelli’s spread collar shirt with vertical stripes and pearl buttons were sold out on Farfetch; and Ralph Lauren’s cream shirt in a cotton and cashmere blend were 75 percent sold out on Mr. Porter, according to Trendalytics. These legacy brands are also bucking a broader luxury slowdown.

Modernising a Classic

But upstarts that can successfully entice consumers with distinguishable design elements and luxurious quality are making their own imprint.

“The best designers at the moment are the ones who are adding little details and actually making that garment interesting enough on its own,” said Danielle Naer, content director at Editorialist, a lifestyle and e-commerce site. They’ve “gotten this customer to buy into the idea that this is the superior version of this garment.”

Preppy menswear label Le Alfré, known for its oxford button-ups with contrast collars, saw sales of its dress shirts jump 300 percent year over year in 2024. Brandon Snower, Le Alfré’s founder, chief executive and creative director, attributes that sales bump to the quality of the brand’s dress shirts: 70 percent of its styles are made from custom fabrics, and they’re all pre-washed — a technique that eliminates the rough feel that dress shirts can have before they’re worn and broken in. Le Alfré sales performance in the past year has made way for it to open its first flagship store in New York in 2025, Snower said.

“A lot of guys are starting to shift into that mentality of ‘I want good fabric, I want to have it last for over six months or a year,‘” Snower said. “As we grow, we want to make sure that the quality stays the same.”

To sustain the dress shirt’s current momentum, emerging labels are developing products that modernise the wardrobe staple, rather than spotlighting it in glossy ad campaigns.

Some are experimenting with fabrics. AYR, which sells elevated basics, counts a $195 button-up with a button-down collar made in a merino poplin wool, which the brand claims is wrinkle resistant and wicks away moisture, as its bestselling men’s dress shirt. The 11-year-old brand plans to use more fabrics that have blended fibres, such as those that mix linen, lyocell and cotton, to continue diversifying its dress shirt assortment as its men’s sales double year over year, said Brice Pattison, AYR’s vice president of menswear.

“What I’m excited to do … is thinking about how blends of fibres make things a little bit special, but very versatile,” said Pattison, “where it has a distinctiveness to it and people can buy multiple colors of it.”

Other labels are challenging the notions of what a dress shirt can be. Since Mfpen’s launch in 2016, a loose fit button-up shirt has been a core part of the Danish menswear label’s offering, and sales of the category grew 60 percent year over year in 2024. In the fall, Mfpen plans to introduce a dressier pyjama-style shirt in a cotton poplin with a more structured collar than the traditional spread collar and piping, as the increase in sales for its dress shirts gives the brand room to expand on its signature minimalistic look, said Sigurd Bank, the brand’s founder and creative director.

It’s another label showing there’s still plenty of room left to subtly reinvent the wardrobe staple.

“The variety of fabrics and expressions are endless,” said Chris Black, a columnist for GQ and the founder of brand consultancy Done to Death Projects, which works with companies like J.Crew and Thom Browne. “There’s so many ways to go that it can still stay fresh and interesting for years to come.”