His Shirt, My Style

DESIGN | by DEBRA PRINZING

SHARON STONE WASN’T THE FIRST Hollywood star to wear a man’s white dress shirt and look glamorous, but perhaps she’s the most recent. Katharine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall appropriated the iconic style decades ago, knotting the shirttails at the waist, rolling up the sleeves and wearing “his” shirt with tailored slacks or a waist-enhancing skirt.

SOURCE: iSTOCKPHOTO.COM

I love wearing my husband’s shirts. Crisp and clean, the 100-percent-cotton shirting feels cool and pleasant against my arms and shoulders. Basic white looks classic; Oxford stripes are preppy and playful; chambray exudes weekend casual. Add pearls and you’re ready for a night on the town.

The men’s dress shirt — for her — will never go out of style.

Fashion designers often reinterpret the dress shirt to fit a woman’s silhouette. Recently, I discovered the work of Seattle designer Farinaz Taghavi. Her fascination with the dress shirt, cut for the female body, is expressed in luxurious fabrics and colors, interpreted with self-tie belts, sexy waistlines and wider collars and cuffs. Yet that tailored, classic element is still present in Farinaz’s designs.

On her website she explains: Women “can keep the sleeves open, pull them up, put their collar down or style (the shirt) differently throughout the day. I want women to make their own statements — my shirt is meant to support them, not dominate them.”

It’s brilliant to see how Farinaz has tapped into women’s love for tailored shirts, either the original guy’s button-down or the feminized gal’s shirt. We wear them to make a personal statement rather than follow a prescribed fashion trend-of-the-moment.

And if we manage to add a touch of old Hollywood glamour while doing so, it’s even better.