That I was wearing a tank top when my flight to Charles de Gaulle was grounded just an hour out of Newark did not bode well for what I had planned as a pageant of ease and grace, a rotation of high-end tanks enrolled as the stars of my wardrobe through Paris Men’s Week.
My travel tank, though, was of the mortal realm: a $25 black Gap racerback that I loved enough to buy in multiples. A go-to tank can make ambitious outfits look more grounded, and decision-making a breeze. But you already know these virtues as a likely wearer yourself; who among us hasn’t succumbed to the simple top’s outsize promise lately?
It is among the few fashion items that can truly claim timelessness, an exclusive club that counts T-shirts, jeans, trenches, and not many others in its ranks. But even evergreen pieces ebb and flow at the center of our collective obsession. For several seasons, fashion’s most powerful brands—Bottega Veneta, Prada, and Jil Sander among them—have cast tanks in a not-minor role on their runways. You could argue that the tank plot is climaxing at this very moment.
And though it is a popular pastime both inside and out of the industry to balk at the high prices of luxury goods, there comes a point where it makes sense to shell out for something that shows up so often in one’s wardrobe rotation. Some of these runway tanks cost literally 500 times as much as a Fruit of the Loom boy’s tank (a folk favorite, to be fair), but become sound investments with competitively low costs-per-wear if we’re getting all Economics 101 over here. Or so I imagined!
Over the next few days during Paris’s increasingly influential Men’s Week calendar, I would put various runway tank tops to the test and measure how they stacked up against the $20, $30, even $50 tanks lining my drawers at home. That is, if I ever made it out of this regional airport…
Day One
A 12-hour delay, 7-hour flight, and not enough Americanos in the world later, and I’m making yet another travel blunder by taking a car from the Marais to the Dries Van Noten show in Ternes. The tank I chose for the occasion was The Row’s Frankie top, $350, tightly fitted, and powerful in its simplicity, as many things from The Row tend to be. The ebullient blue foil ball-gown skirt by designer Michelle Del Rio that I wore with it spoke volumes, a perfect opportunity for a streamlined tank to play the quiet part. A pair of heeled ballerinas from The Row and a Medea shopper bag joined the rest of the outfit—the whole bunch of us shoved into the back of an Uber, watching the minutes tick by on my iPhone, stuck in Paris’s notorious traffic.
I arrived at the location of the Dries show—an artfully unfinished building with sublime arches—with minutes to spare. Anyone who’s ever clicked through a street-style gallery knows fashion week is no stranger to outfits that test the extremes. But even so, as I took my seat, I felt my ensemble drawing eyeballs and even comments, as from one former Vogue editor acquaintance who said she noticed the skirt before recognizing its wearer. Where my reflective bottom half called onlookers’ attention, my upper half made sure I stayed squarely on this planet.
Day Two
Of all the tanks populating my outfit screenshots folder, a remarkable number of them bear the same desire-stirring crest: Loewe’s swirling anagram logo. I admit that this was the first tank to jog me out of my stubbornness around what a tank “should” cost. And, wearing the tank out for a day, I got the sense that others felt similarly. Their attraction to Loewe’s Anagram Tank, $390, was betrayed by their comments and curiosity. I wore a slightly oversized version, a men’s M, with a Lido skirt, Martiniano heels, and a By Far bag.
I spent the earlier part of the sweltering afternoon visiting showrooms, from Lauren Manoogian to Completedworks to Charlotte Chesnais (“You seem like you’re staying so cool in this heat,” one of the latter’s brand members greeted me with at the top of a four-story walk-up), before rushing to meet an interview subject by the canal. One of the reasons I was in town that week was to take in-person meetings for the shopping newsletter I run, Magasin, including one with a Berlin-based designer who arrived wearing a pair of monochromatic sandals featuring a logo that harmonized with my tank. Hers was Hermès and mine Loewe, but there was a shared sense of brand reverence in basic forms.
Attending an event at Lower East Side boutique Colbo’s Paris pop-up later that evening drew forth similar chatter; two friends of the NYC brand murmured amongst themselves about a mutual of theirs who had bought the tank (“Tank of the year,” they said), and shared their intentions of buying it (“I think it’s like $400 though…”).
Day Three
A stylist friend from New York reminded me that Europe had just kicked off the private sale season, so, naturally, my plans for the day were rearranged accordingly. At Lemaire’s Marais flagship, I pulled a pair of shorts with a telltale circular sticker on the tag from the rack, and a helpful sales associate kindly asked if he could add a tank to my fitting room to try them on with (I had arrived wearing a dress). The shorts were a pass, but the Lemaire Rib Tank Top, $120 (on sale for $78), in a refined silky cotton adapted to my body so well it was almost a shock. Rather than cling with elastic yarns or hang boyishly, it seemed tailored to rest along my existing curves. I was taking the tank with me no matter what, but the question at the register remained: “Vente privée?” With a wink, a nod, and a 30% discount, the tank was mine.
Back home, I quickly changed into the tank and another spoil from the day’s sale shopping, a Rick Owens denim skirt, plus a Jil Sander bag, and vintage Dolce Gabbana heels, and set off to the Marine Serre show—this time, I was taking the train. Arriving at the scene, it was immediately apparent that tank tops were persona grata. The brand is behind one of the tank wave’s most cultish styles, a round-neck vest centrally emblazoned with the house’s crescent logo, and it was being sported en masse by dozens, if not hundreds, of its closest supporters. The runway too pushed the tank agenda, sending down sheer jacquard-logo versions on two different looks.
Day Four
And here, a confession: There was another tank on my docket for the week—a Gucci x Adidas one-shoulder top, $985, bearing the duet’s massive joint logo. I put it on and took it off at least once each day in Paris, rendered bashful under its bold, branded presence. I wanted to be the kind of dresser who could pull off such a thing—like Stella McCartney’s “Rock Royalty” or Paris Hilton’s “Stop Being Desperate”—but I chickened out, delaying its debut in my Paris Men’s Week wardrobe indefinitely.
I even had the notion to wear it in Croatia, where I was headed for a post-FW wind-down, but once again found myself stopped by some invisible force from leaving my room at Dubrovnik’s Hotel Bellevue. Were the Adriatic’s pristine shores not an iconic setting to match the tank’s iconic face? Was there not some Mykonos-leaning scene that would have eaten it straight up? Surely, Lindsay Lohan would have worn it.
The truth is that I had been spoiled by a slew of really attractive, really easy tanks all week that indulged me and my comfort zone. The low-key designer tank is a self-contained solution for navigating dressier spaces without the “ick” of feeling overdone. I’m not saying I would never wear a plain Gap tank to a fashion show, but these especially nice ones definitely made me carry myself differently. I still have a few hundred wears until the $400 tank proves as economical as the dollar-store one, but with all their ease, comfort, and styling potential, I’d bet I could knock it out in a single summer.
