The boyfriend shirt is back this spring

Julia Robson

• Last Updated: November 21. 2009 5:09PM UAE / November 21. 2009 1:09PM GMT

The singer Rihanna is one of many celebrities who helped make the boyfriend shirt popular. Ray Tamarra / Getty Images / AFP

The surprise hit of the season is the boyfriend shirt, louche and half-tucked into J Brand Jeans – the style that celebrities such as Rihanna, Keira Knightley, Agyness Deyn and Chloe Sevigny made popular last summer – and the style being hailed as the saviour of commercial fashion for spring 2010.

A denim version is the linchpin of Gap’s 2010 collection. The label also has a chino version with popper studs for buttons, which looks like something Farrah Fawcett might have worn in Charlie’s Angels.

Having spent the last few weeks trawling through showrooms of spring/summer chain-store merchandise, I can report that billowing shirts in every fabric from lace to cotton are ubiquitous, much like they were in the 1980s.

Many come in gingham checks or shades you normally find on the make-up counter such as pearly pink, peach, tangerine and buff. They are best teamed with pearls or Nicholas Kirkwood’s first-ever flats (both crucial 2010 accessories).

Christopher Kane’s cowgirl shirts are the most sought-after press samples on the planet, so you can get an idea of what fashion spreads in glossy magazines will look like come March. (Here’s a hint: yee haw!)

This week, even those supercool new kids on the fashion block, bloggers, are flagging up shirts. When sites such as Scott Schuman’s photo-led The Sartorialist, which gets 225,000 hits a day, homes in on anything, you take note.

The blogger Disneyrollergirl is also mulling over boyfriend shirts, and recently revealed rather fabulously how Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, has brought a whole new meaning to them: Roitfeld’s boyfriend, Christian Restoin, is set to relaunch the French label Equipment in 2010. Come next spring, the most stylish person alive could be wearing her actual boyfriend’s shirt.

There was a time during the 1980s and early 1990s when Equipment was as trailblazing a label (at least in terms of top halves) as, say, Jimmy Choo is to shoes. I remember washed silk slouchy Equipment shirts in every colour imaginable with patch pockets. You wore them oversized and slightly falling off the shoulders.

Disneyrollergirl’s blog showed a dark blue, sheer organza shirt and hinted there were Hawaiian prints in the new range. If Prada’s doing them, why not?

But enough about 2010. What about now? A glance around the shops reveals dresses, dresses and more dresses, mostly in purple or gold with a slither of strap and plenty of sequins. It is almost a frock epidemic.

But amid brassy cocktail maxis and ruched minis there is an antidote: plain shirts, the sartorial Tamiflu of our times. The androgynous white and slightly baggy Oxford is enjoying a comeback. New ways to wear it include belted over leggings or, for the daring, over Bebaroque’s Olga tights, with that fabulous flash of gold snake running down the front.

And no, the shirt hasn’t merely morphed into a dress. It’s got to look like a shirt. If you don’t go in for striped mannish styles and aren’t convinced by Teri Hatcher’s look in Desperate Housewives (I’m certainly not), try blouses with frilly fronts or sleeves – less macho, more Ralph Lauren, equally on trend.

American brands such as Velvet by Graham & Spencer are cut for women but still have that boyish feel you’d expect to find in traditional city labels such as Thomas Pink (which, annoyingly, don’t allow for a bust).

Whether they are in fashion or not, oversize shirts frequently make it into fashion editors’ and stylists’ personal trunks when they go on photographic assignments. Where a T-shirt would be considered too informal and a dress impractical, shirts offer shelter from the sun while making the wearer appear “on duty” and neutral to trends. I can’t tell you how many fashion photographers, male and female, wear box-fresh shirts every day.

Gwen Stefani, Madonna and fashionistas such as Daphne Guinness, who has created her own bespoke shirt line, also wear them. So did Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.

The best thing about boyfriend shirts is that anyone can wear them, regardless of their romantic status. Belt them but never tuck them in. The last thing you want to look like is some loser boyfriend.