The New Power Look: Shirtless Suits

A wool vest (or what can also be taken as a sleeveless suit) paired with shorts.

When Kim Kardashian stepped out in a slick Tom Ford tuxedo in 2017, her look became the subject to a resurfacing study of tailoring. Bare-chested, she forwent the expected presence of a shirt layered underneath her jacket. The black peak-lapelled suit was hardly out of the ordinary, but how it was worn was. Grace Jones, a ’70s icon of female liberation, could perhaps be accredited for first popularising the shirtless Le Smoking look; her 1981’s “Nightclubbing” album cover had a portrait of her, a cigarette perched between her lips, in a boxy Giorgio Armani suit, sans any other layered garment. Her unclothed, glistening chest protrudes as much a challenging “I dare you” stance as her posture and angular features do.

A belted wrap blazer, worn as if it’s a dress.

For decades, the suit has been a symbolic uniform for women. What began as a means to break into the early male-dominated corporate world has gone beyond the insertion of masculinity through clothing. Today the suit is free from its gendered shackles. It has been deconstructed, rounded down, taken in and let all the way out, and there is little to be done to it that would feel new. Except, perhaps, to remove everything around it.

The eschewal of a shirt in an ensemble has grown increasingly ubiquitous — recently at the 2020 Golden Globes, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kerry Washington came in their own variations of the look — but beyond celebrity or red carpet dressing, the shirtless oeuvre is surprisingly easy to fit into your daily rotation. Here, T takes a spin of the new power look.

Vacationwear as Everydaywear

A spectrum of summer pieces in one look.

Occasional escapes from the constant turmoils of life is a necessity. And vacationing is a mental disposition. Just because you made a fresh return from a trip to a remote tropical island with that vacation glow still intact doesn’t mean you can’t start daydreaming of your next getaway. Like how wanderlust can extend beyond the holiday period, the same applies for resortwear: Dressing for leisure need not be boxed to an allocated season nor location.

Designers, such as Jacquemus, Caravana and Cult Gaia, are part of the growing fashion cohort making a case for year-round leisure dressing. Theirs is an ease that’s swathed in crisp cotton drapery and shoulder- or torso-revealing garments. Meanwhile, the Olsen sisters’ The Row posits minimal silhouettes that strip down vacationwear to its bare essentials: think effortless crewnecks, white denim and cosy layering of easy pieces. The opposite can perhaps be best seen at Bottega Veneta, where suggestive leather infiltrates its vacation fetish-wear: a trove of slip-on sandals, handheld clutches and silky tops that resemble boat sails in summer-apt hues of baby blue and creamy coffee.

Here, swimwear chameleons its way into a a nine-to-five outfit.

Whether or not you find yourself in a resort anytime soon, there are plenty of covetable styles to transport you to a tranquil island life state of mind. Our advice? Dare to take creative liberty with it: Consider a piling up of summer pieces in one look or styling up a bikini top into an everyday top.

Full-Blown Femininity

After a decade of reigning minimalism, expressive volume and romantic details make a grand return.

While the rise of streetwear and the continued embrace of power suiting define perhaps two corners of the triangle in a woman’s wardrobe, there has been a grand return to all things pretty and feminine. This season, fashion designers are serving up platters of ruffles, oversized puff shoulders, head-to-toe florals and outfits with embellishments that runneth over. Thanks to the likes of Simone Rocha, Molly Goddard and Cecilie Bahnsen, a romantic, exaggerated dress has evolved from a trend into a veritable wardrobe staple of its own.

Optical zesty colours.

Ever since its existence, fashion and the canvas it provides for self-expression has yet to fully shake off its inferior status as “a female thing”. Despite the leaps and bounds that women of the industry have made at large, the label continues, still, to haunt. The recent resurgence of over-the-top feminine dressing can then be perceived as a punch-packing rebellion against it. As seen here, T picks two ruffle-enshrouded dresses and pair them with the accessories that best complement them.