For a very specific demographic, nothing signals spring like breaking out the boat shoes, khaki shorts, and a pale pink Vineyard Vines polos—with a popped collar, of course.
Thanks to his latest outfit, Harry Styles can now count himself in sartorial community with East Coast preps, Southern fraternity boys, and Oxford university rowing elites alike. The singer was spotted in London on March 28 wearing a cotton candy colored polo shirt, its collar upturned around his neck. But make no mistake: Styles isn’t about to go hit the putting green or charter a yacht off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Instead, he is modeling a new way forward, showing mullet-sporting, mustachioed fashion boys just how to wear the frat star staple.
Styles paired his preppy shirt with a cerulean chore coat, pinstriped trousers, and a pair of well-worn Vans that we can assume were once white. (Styles, who wore the classic sneakers to sit front row at London Fashion Week, is a well-documented fan of the shoe brand.) Of course, no look is complete without his beloved black, sepia-tinted Jacques Marie Mage aviator sunglasses.
An investor in Steven Stokey-Daley’s label S.S. Daley, perhaps Styles is simply mirroring the exaggerated, flipped collars that the designer sent down the runway back in February with fall 2025 collection. Or maybe he’s taking cues from Stokey-Daley himself. And really, Harry Styles is existing in the same trendsphere and whipping around the same pop culture weathervane as the rest of us, with L.L Bean totes and Ralph Lauren blazers and the J. Crew catalog blowing in the breeze. More practically: As the weather gets warmer, an upturned collar offers a simple bit of sun protection or a channel for some cool air. Whatever’s going on behind this styling trick, if anyone can kickstart a popped collar revival, it’s Harry Styles.
