Back to Front

Reinventing the wardrobe staple that is a button-up shirt is near impossible. And yet, with searches for “button-up shirts” reportedly up 20% and “upcycling” soaring by 190% in the last month, fashion’s current obsession with shirting suddenly makes a lot more sense. Everyone wants pieces that feel new without actually requiring an entirely new wardrobe. Well, the runways of fashion week have a simple answer for us… wearing it back to front. Yes, you read that correctly. The very styling choice that our parents quickly conditioned out of us when we first began dressing ourselves is now in fashion. The trend comes as an innovative response to a decade of overconsumption that has been legitimised as a high-power fashion move with the reinforcement of recent runways.

Prada menswear’s most recent FW26 runway presented us with a suite of adaptable and transformative pieces ingrained in reimagined tradition. And the most deceptively simple piece of the collection? A backward button-up, the very everyday essential that lives in all of our wardrobes. Perfectly remastered for an upcycle that requires no cutting, sewing, or gluing, aka the trifecta of guaranteed mess-ups for the average fashionista (us included).

Meanwhile, Sarah Burton’s third collection for Givenchy took the idea even further. The structural components she introduced – sharp tailoring, architectural collars, exposed seams – have been, in the words of Missy Elliott, flipped and reversed. Her backward styling was applied to more than just shirts with the inclusion of backward coats, blazers and furs. But the piece de résistance was Stephen Jones transforming actual shirts into hats. In a move that defines fashion's ability to overthink everything, Jones was reportedly inspired by mundane activities of tops becoming makeshift summer hats. Whilst we don’t think we'll be walking around with shirt sleeves dangling from our ears anytime soon, the backward button-up is something we can definitely get on board with. 

And now the trend is finally migrating from the front row to the pavement, which, let’s be honest, is where trends either survive or quietly die. In fact, the backward shirt is already aggressively taking over the cobblestone streets of Lisbon, rapidly cementing itself as the official, slightly chaotic uniform of Eurosummer 2026. It was being styled in every conceivable configuration: some left it hanging loose and breezy over jeans, while others went for a full, uncompromising commitment to the bit with an entire backward poplin shirt dress. This comes on the heels of fashion royalty Alexa Chung being recently spotted with her lemon-striped shirt completely the wrong way round, paired with a knife-pleat skirt and a vintage fur in hand Or rather, the right way round now. Naturally, the high street is already catching on. COS, Mango and & Other Stories are all stocking oversized button-ups that practically beg to be reversed, and at a fraction of the runway price tag.

The beauty of this moment is just how versatile (and attainable) it is; you don’t even need to buy anything new. In fact, the oldest thing in your wardrobe can become the most current by simply turning it around. Take an Oxford borrowed from your dad, tuck it into tailored trousers, and cinch the open back with a belt for a structured, corset-adjacent silhouette that works for dinner reservations you're probably already late for. Alternatively, grab that vintage flannel collecting dust since 2019 and leave it loose and unbuttoned over wide-leg jeans for effortless off-duty dressing. And for the subtle girls who want to participate without shouting about it? That crisp white shirt from a job interview you never touched again, layered under a blazer so just the collar peeks out at the nape of the neck. 

Whether you’re shopping new or shopping vintage, we’ve curated some of our favourite button-up shirts below: