The rugby shirt is the Breton top of 2024. I am entirely serious. Instead of Pablo Picasso or Brigitte Bardot in a navy and white stripe T-shirt, your style icon for this spring is Prince William in his St Andrews uni days, popping the contrast white collar on his Abercrombie & Fitch.
This is not quite true. I’m exaggerating for effect, no need to panic. Forget freshers’ week. Put Twickenham out of your mind. Instead, think David Hockney, in a pink and blue rugby shirt with washed-out green trousers. Think Diana, Princess of Wales. Chloë Sevigny, Oscar-nominated actor who – more importantly for our purposes, is one of the best dressed women in the world, with an innate style compass that unfailingly finds true north – regularly wears a rugby shirt, these days. “It’s warm and it’s easy and it’s casual. It’s basically a nicer version of a sweatshirt. I mean, it has a collar!” she told Harper’s Bazaar last year.
