Rihanna's half-tucked shirt collar is the runway trick anyone can steal

Celebrity & Entertainment journalist
Rihanna smiling at an event in 2019
Rihanna by Rajasekharan 2019 Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Rihanna went to the mall this weekend and, naturally, turned the trip into a styling lesson. The star was photographed shopping at The Grove in Los Angeles, and the detail everyone noticed was not her coat, her bag or her sneakers. It was the way she wore her shirt.

The outfit itself was stacked. She wore a classic khaki trench coat, carried a monogrammed Louis Vuitton bag and finished it with suede Miu Miu x New Balance sneakers. But the move that "sealed the deal," as Vogue's Christian Allaire put it, was the half-tucked collar. She popped out just one side of her white shirt's collar, which made the whole look feel undone, a little happenstance and less like she was trying too hard.

Her effortlessly-cool outfit formula? It all lies in the half-tucked shirt collar.

A runway move you can steal for free

That slightly off-kilter collar is not new to fashion insiders. Allaire notes the flourish has been all over recent runways, showing up in the fall collections from Bottega Veneta, Celine, Balenciaga and Jil Sander. The idea is the same on stage as it is off: one imperfect detail makes a careful outfit feel more spontaneous.

Even how Rihanna carried her Louis Vuitton bag added to the effect. She held it by her hip, more like a clutch, in a way that mirrors how models carry bags at high-fashion shows. Whether she meant to copy the catwalk or just dresses this way by instinct, the result reads like a look that was studied, then relaxed.

The takeaway is the useful part: you do not need a new coat or a designer bag to copy this. Grab a button-down, tuck one collar point in and leave the other out. As Allaire wrote, "The streets are her runway" - but the half-tucked collar works just as well in front of a mirror. It takes five seconds and works with any shirt already hanging in your closet.

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