Why the Quarter-Zip is 2026’s Smartest Wardrobe Promotion
Jonathan Bailey at the DIOR SS26 show in Paris
What was once a beige staple of the LinkedIn lads has emerged as a legitimate power play
Words - Joseph Furness
Few garments ever truly escape Finance Bro Asylum. Most – like the padded gilet and the Apple Watch – are institutionalised for life, condemned to laps around Broadgate Circle ad infinitum. Yet, the quarter-zip has pulled off a modish prison break. Transcending the glass roofs of the world’s business hubs, the layer has been headhunted by the world’s tastemakers, onboarded into the sartorial zeitgeist after scrubbing its workplace history.
ASAP Rocky in Miu Miu
While the silhouette’s bull run toward clout was first sparked when A$AP Rocky prophesied the trend in Miu Miu during Paris Fashion Week, the haute monde insists the real shift occurred at Chanel. In a landmark New York showcase, the maison’s creative director, Matthieu Blazy, sent models down a subway platform in elevated takes on the collared zip-up, effectively verifying it as a high-fashion must-have.
The trend’s real propulsion, however, comes from Gen Z – a demographic treating getting dressed as an act of manifestation. When 21-year-old TikTok creators Jason Gyamfi and Richard Minor declared they were swapping Nike Tech Fleeces for quarter-zips, and coffee for matcha, the garment instantly became shorthand for stylish maturity. It was textile proof of a generation’s frontal lobe finally developing (a biological turning point the youth have somehow trademarked).
Chanel Métiers d’ art show in New York
The Gen Z movement found its mainstream face when Central Cee — the present barometer for the streets — embraced the pivot. Trading his signature tracksuit for a Ralph Lauren quarter-zip and chinos in a viral TikTok, the British rapper authenticated the look for millions of young fans overnight. It has since become the uniform of a demographic scaling toward a style that projects the success they’ve spent years absorbing from fictional power brokers like Suits’ Harvey Specter or Industry’s Henry Muck, to say nothing of real-life authority figures like Gareth Southgate, Prince Harry, and Barack Obama.
In embracing management cosplay, Gen Z is leaning into a distinctly Gen X philosophy: dressing for the life you want, not the one you have. The yuppie era of the late eighties and early nineties was defined by a careerist aesthetic; millennials spent the last decade deconstructing that image, retreating toward irony and a studied nonchalance, channelled through the likes of their Boomer fathers’ off-duty New Balances.
THE RAKISH EDIT
Gen Z, however, has put smart-casual on a performance improvement plan. By blending Gen X silhouettes – wide trousers and wired tech – with the structured quarter-zip, they have traded OOO athleisure for aspiration, turning a corporate stalwart into a modern vision of stealth wealth. It offers the physical ease and eschews being try-hard, yet it has the quiet threat of someone who actually has their life together.
While Gen Zs were the ones to fast-track the garment’s promotion, the silhouette remains open-source. Its newfound authority is age-agnostic—its cross-generational appeal visible on moodboard mainstays like the aforementioned Rocky, and also actors Jonathan Bailey and Brad Pitt. At 41-year-old designer Jonathan Anderson’s second Dior showcase held in October, Bailey wore a quarter-zip layered with a striped shirt and tie, refreshing the piece through a nostalgic prep lens and proving Millennials needn't be aged out of the trend. Meanwhile, Pitt’s recent adoption of the look shows that Gen X has the power to reclaim the yuppie style.
Championed by A-listers, validated by luxury houses, and embraced by Gen Z from London’s ends to NYC’s up-and-coming crowd, the quarter-zip has successfully renegotiated its image. No longer a dusty, mandatory layer, it has become a highly considered choice — a garment that has climbed the ladder to earn its place as a 2026 essential. If you’re smart, you’ll invest.