Over the course of several seasons, brands from Loewe and Marine Serre to Prada have featured simple, basic tank tops in their collections. And this summer — as you could see in a photo from Copenhagen Fashion Week or a photo of every second influencer on Instagram — designer T-shirts have become the basis of any fashionable wardrobe.
A designer tank top is a sleeveless top with a sporty silhouette that could be mistaken for a regular tank top, except that in most cases the designer version has a sign of status: a visible brand logo. Marine Serre’s crescent moon motif has appeared on almost all of the brand’s pieces since the Parisian designer released her debut Fall/Winter 2017 collection. Marine Serre is certainly not the first brand in fashion history to develop a signature motif and apply it to a relatively simple item. clothes But the label has really become a driving force in the popularization of designer T-shirts in the current period of extreme demand for them.
Marine Serre introduced a tank with its own iconic motif in 2017, layering it under a layered strapless dress in its debut collection. Since then, the shirt has remained part of her core collection and is a constant sell-out both in physical stores and online.
Price certainly plays a role in the elevation of designer jerseys. While Marine Serre’s intricately handcrafted pieces cost thousands of dollars, the tank tops sell for a much more affordable $155. In the context of luxury shopping, a $155 top is a good place to start building a branded wardrobe. Just like a pair of monogrammed socks or a designer phone case, a logo tee can build brand loyalty without breaking the bank.
Of course, everything is relative, and prices for one brand’s basics will differ from another’s. The Loewe spring-summer 2022 collection features a white striped T-shirt with a logo in the form of swirling letters. Given Loewe’s growing popularity among a diverse cohort of fashion fans, this logo tee is destined to be a hit.
As soon as the collection went on sale, it was announced that every Scandinavian influencer was wearing it. But the price of the shirt exactly corresponded to the high-quality products of the Spanish brand. Loewe is a label founded on the principles of craftsmanship, and whether it’s a genuine calf leather handbag or a ribbed jersey top, the brand is meticulous about the quality of everything. In this way, you are not buying a thing for one season; and clothes that you can rely on for many years.
The appearance of the tank top in the Prada fall-winter 2022/2023 collection was reinforced by the theme of pragmatic clothing. Practicality acquires a new meaning and value, which provides ideal conditions for creating such simple things in the joint work of Miucci Prada and Raf Simons.
Similar to Loewe and Marine Serre, Prada presented its own interpretation of the tank top paired with layered skirts without tucking it in. It reminds us that you can wear a designer tank top any way you want. Plus, it goes with everything from parachute pants at Loewe to a deconstructed denim jacket from Glenn Martens’ first collection for Diesel.
It’s worth noting that the logo doesn’t have to be visible for a shirt to qualify as designer. Bottega Veneta creative director Mathieu Blazy unveiled his debut Fall-Winter 2022/2023 collection for the brand with the most normcore look: a plain white T-shirt tucked into a pair of low-rise blue jeans. There was no visible logo on the top, in fact, like The Row or Hermès, who rarely brand their items. In the absence of a logo, the whole point is how you style and how you present yourself in fairly simple things.
