This Spring Is All About the Men’s Crop Top
The rumours are true — men’s shirts are inching upward. Here, one writer investigates fashion’s current infatuation with shorter hems.
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but this past summer, I hauled two T-shirts to my tailor, Kim, and asked her to crop the hems. For years now, I’ve entrusted Kim with amending my most treasured garments, from a vintage Armani coat to a thrifted Prada suit. These tees are just as perfect and irreplaceable — the kind of lived-in staples you keep buying lesser versions of before sourcing the holy grail. One is a thrifted holey number that cost less than the alteration; the other I bought at a shop in L.A. with such a scant, mysterious online presence that I wondered if I had imagined it. The point is, I couldn’t risk losing them.
“I don’t wanna go too short,” I cautioned, mortified that I was here getting my T-shirts tailored. But Kim, a pro, was unfazed. “This is the style now,” she replied, marking white lines on each shirt about five centimetres north of the sagging hems.
A week later, I was back in Kim’s fitting room. Even in the unforgiving light of the three-way mirror, I knew my sartorial experiment had worked. This minor alteration changed how I carried myself. Untucked, the tees fell right at the waist, adding a boyish insouciance that made a generic outfit cool, not costume-y.
Kim is right: Men’s shirts are getting shorter. The queer-coded style has gone mainstream thanks to an algorithmic alchemy of menswear TikTok, Hollywood heartthrobs (or their stylists) and ascendant designers. Paul Mescal’s navel-baring tees are lighting up the internet. Influencers have been hacking off the hems of their T-shirts.
Buzzy independent labels like Rier (the Paris brand behind the semi-viral $1,000 fleece), Barcelona’s Gimaguas and New York designer Connor McKnight have made the cropped silhouette a signature. Even a cursory browse through Zara and Abercrombie & Fitch suggests that those brands’ design teams have noticed, too, and are introducing the mass market to tiny tees, boxy cropped sweaters and button-downs with the hems hiked up.
So, what’s the appeal behind the look? I asked two top stylists why the look is so popular. “Cropped shirts are a more flattering fit, especially if you’re not over six feet,” says Corey Ng, who has styled celebrities including Cole Sprouse and Antoni Porowski. “It’s all about the proportion. A shirt hitting the waistline visually lengthens your legs, and a boxier shirt gives the illusion of a broader upper body.”
A shorter, blockier silhouette is novel without looking too trendy. It’s modern, polished and effortless. “Lately, guys want to look more effortless, and the cropped tee is a great way to do so,” says Brodie Reardon, who styles Jude Law. “It spices up an outfit a bit more than a normal-fit T-shirt does, allowing you to emphasize other styling elements, like a belt.”
The cut also works across a range of bodies — tall, short, skinny, burly. Dwayne Vatcher, who co-runs artisanal sportswear brand Body of Work with his partner, Brittney MacKinnon, tells me his heavyweight sweatshirts and T-shirts are all cut “on the threshold of cropped” for a distinctive look that still falls well below the navel. Cropped tees also make layering easier. (In true sk8er boi style, Reardon wears his over a long-sleeved tee.) But there’s also utility there: I find my shorter sweaters don’t bunch as much under parkas or sag below my bomber.
I’m averse to calling this a trend. (“Trendiness” is the clout-chasing foil of the more-sophisticated, nobler “timelessness.”) The cropped silhouette is just another tool to consider in your style arsenal — a new way to play with proportion. Before you take all of your shirts to the tailor, consider it a worthy option rather than a dramatic rejection of longer hems.
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With files from Stephanie Davoli
This article first appeared in FASHION’s March 2025 issue. Find out more here.
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