If last summer was all about the Bardot top, the trend that will carbon date any look to summer 2016 is a little more subtle. In fact, it’s so teeny-tiny it’s blink-and-you-miss-it stuff. See: piping. Any alpha shirt will feature it this season. The proof? Beyoncé wears it in the opening shot of Formation. And if that isn’t ballast for a trend going mass, we don’t know what is.
Beyoncé’s shirt is part of Gucci’s spring/summer collection. Piping also featured at Prada and JW Anderson, yet more reason to avoid all shirts without piping all year. The most fun way – and most Prada way – to do piping is when it looks like a six-year-old has taken a felt-tip pen to your outfit and outlined all the edges, from collars to pockets. Prada’s see-through coats with contrasting piping are particularly charming.
Part of the reason piping is having a moment comes from the pyjama trend that has slowly trickled down into fashion over the last few years – now worn to parties by Vogue editors and parents at the schoolgates. Add a bit of piping to a shirt and it immediately goes from a spray-starched workwear staple to something far more louche, just through that association with what we wear to bed.
This is an easy trick, and one the high street is big on, too. See palm-tree shirts at Topshop, and pyjama co-ords at Zara, both with contrast piping.
There’s also, of course, piping’s other context: the wild west. A classic Western shirt has piping across the chest, framing embroidery of roses or some such, and is often worn by the indisputable fashion icon that is Dolly Parton.
The Dolly shirt could become the item where the piping trend ends up. Asos has a rather fetching chambray one with piping, and Mary Katrantzou’s autumn collection was inspired by Westernwear.
2015 might have been Brigitte’s, and Beyoncé might have spearheaded the whole piping thing, but even she has to stand aside for Dolly.
