All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
In the summer, it can be all too easy to live in jeans or jorts and a tank top or T-shirt, but smocked tops are one easy substitute if you want to add more design flair to this uniform and swap out the white cotton tee for a top with more personality.
Smocking has long been associated with summer; however, we haven’t seen as many crinkly tops in new-in sections since Lizzie McGuire-coded popcorn tops invaded American malls in the early 2000s.
One designer spearheading this movement in 2025 is Conner Ives, who has reimagined logo tees by stitching an elastic thread through the fabric of vintage cotton T-shirts to create a unique, shrunken, fitted silhouette with a shirred texture reminiscent of the aforementioned Y2K popcorn tops.
This smocking has become a design signature for Ives, with the technique applied to polo tops, basketball jerseys, and football tops – each upcycled tee available to buy on the website is one-of-a-kind, while the fabric is also a running theme throughout the ready-to-wear collections.
Conner Ives’s reconstructed football jerseys will appeal to eclectic dressers; however, a lot of this summer’s smocked tops err towards a more minimalist aesthetic, with black tank tops, classic T-shirts, and camisoles elevated with texture, adding more depth to an otherwise simple basic.
Contemporary brands such as Ganni, Molly Goddard, and Damson Madder are all having a crinkled summer, while other accessible retailers, like & Other Stories and M&S, have plenty of shirred, classic designs that will bring a little extra something to your jorts and T-shirt uniform.
This story originally appeared in British Vogue.
