Like the polo shirt before it, the style is yet another putting-green-to-conference-room crossover hit. Even Wall Street is getting in on the action.
It doesn’t matter, really, how hard brands try to market their long-sleeved, tall-collared, semi-shiny zip-at-the-neck pullovers as activewear, meant for the brisk and rugged outdoor air of a hike or a jog or a long biking excursion. The same thing always happens.
A friendlier – comfy, washable – alternative to the increasingly too-stuffy business suit , the garment was mostly seen on golf courses just a decade or so ago.a phenomenon already in progress. But thanks to the new ubiquity of remote and hybrid work, the polyester quarter-zip has established itself as just the latest style to pop out of the driving-range-to-conference-room pipeline.
Mark Moran, 32, works in finance in New York City. Even when he was earning his MBA in Virginia a few years ago, quarter-zips were all over campus. “It’s like this aspirational dress code. Because when you think about what a semiretired corporate executive wears, it’s that,” he says. At a previous job in banking, Moran once peeked over a colleague’s shoulder and saw him ordering four identical navy quarter-zips at once.
Shanley says that’s because work is now only sometimes synonymous with the office: “The reality is when people aren’t on a call, they may be back into their T-shirt,” Shanley says. “But then maybe they want to step it up, or even show some of their company’s branding when they’re on the call“They’re going to wear it over and over again,” Shanley says of the quarter-zip. Especially if it’s from a household name brand.