When Pip Durell, founder of the London-based brand With Nothing Underneath, designed her first shirt, she referenced a men’s style that she already owned. “I quite literally cut it up,” she recounts, “took the cuffs up, took the bottom off, moved the buttons.” White vintage button-downs are part of the former editor’s daily uniform, often paired with jeans and loafers. Unimpressed with the women’s shirting options available to her and tired of overlooking sizing issues in the men’s department, she decided to create her own version that combined crisp tailoring with proportions that better match a female body.
Durell launched her label in 2017 with “The Classic” and has since expanded to four core styles, including “The Weekend,” “The Boyfriend,” and “The Chessie,” along with seasonal variations to total around 90 SKUs. Each one retails between $150 to $345, depending on fabric and silhouette. Seven years in, the brand is not only profitable—it experienced a 130-percent increase in sales last year—but celebrity fans like Meghan Markle, Florence Pugh, and Emily Ratajkowski have all worn the tops, often as Durell would: in a no-frills fashion with denim or paired with a blazer and simple pants.
Men’s shirting and the larger world of tailoring boasts a rich history of practicality laced with thoughtful flourishes, if any. “Menswear has always been there to serve a purpose,” Durell explains. “[It] has pockets. It needs to perform. Whereas women’s clothing was historically more about aesthetics.” She is part of a contingent of women reimagining the men’s shirt, capitalizing on this underexplored, and often genderized, world of tailoring.
Marie Marot founded her namesake Parisian label in 2017 on a similar foundation. “Many women’s shirts felt overly feminized—too fitted, too delicate, or lacking the structure that gives them character. They didn’t have the same sense of strength and timeless appeal I admired in menswear,” she explains. Some of her recent styles feature a heavier structured poplin fabric often relegated to menswear to create that same shape, plus English seams and semi-rigid collars “to offer our customers shirts that are both elegant and robust.” Since her launch, Marot has debuted three collaborations with J.Crew. Her shirts have also been worn by Markle and, additionally, Kamala Harris, who donned her sky-blue Patti style on the presidential campaign trail.
A Marie Marot design.
So, why not just buy a men’s shirt? The most obvious answer is sizing. Women’s bodies can sometimes be the inverse of men’s, narrower at the shoulder and wider at the hip, with thicker necks and longer arms. Even if you want that “boyfriend” look, “there are ways to feminize an oversized fit,” says Olivia Villanti, founder of the made-to-order shirting brand Chava Studio, which launched in Mexico City over the pandemic with the “perfect” relaxed Tuxedo Shirt. (Chava is Mexican slang for “young woman.”)
Villanti scales the cuffs and collars down slightly, focusing on the back pleat to achieve a subtle cocoon shape. She also works with a midweight inner lining to lend a casual feel. “Everything feels a little more feminine when it has a bit of fluidity in it.” (She acknowledges the silliness of binary terms and insists that, when designing, she doesn’t consider a specific gender.) It all comes down to the styling—Villanti recommends pairing some of Chava Studio’s oversized styles with a slim, slightly flared pant.
Chava Studios’s Tuxedo Shirt.
Chava Studio focuses more on what Villanti calls the “dying” art form of tailoring, preserving techniques used by her Mexico City atelier, a portion of which she took over from her in-laws’s textile business. Customers can purchase a made-to-order shirt via the website or make an in-person appointment for something custom. “The entire tailoring experience of going and getting a shirt made to measure has and remains to be seen through the lens of a man’s lifestyle circa 1950,” she says, noting that she takes a great deal of sartorial inspiration from that generation. And, at a steep price tag ranging from $345 to $525, they’re made to last, too. “What makes us special is that we produce the way we do,” Villanti adds.
With Nothing Underneath’s Durell, on the other hand, has a slightly different value proposition. Not only has she embraced wholesale models, retailing with Harrods, Liberty, and Selfridge’s, but she’s swapped locality for price. Her initial goal was to make a beautiful shirt for under 100 pounds, and she has not skewed far from it thanks to the factories she found in Porto, Portugal. The company is a certified B-Corp, but the tenet of sustainability extends beyond ethical practices and innovative techniques.
Shirts have proven their longevity. After all, these aren’t brands who retire styles season after season; each still carries the hero product they launched with. Another resounding similarity? The female founders all design for themselves, with their brands serving as extensions of their personal style. “My designs are rooted in what I want to wear and how I want to feel—confident, comfortable, and effortlessly put together,” Marot says. “At the same time, I think these values resonate with many women, which is what makes the process so fulfilling.”