Jonathan Bailey attends the Christian Dior Womenswear Spring/Summer 2026 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on Oct. 1 in Paris. He wore a branded Dior quarter-zip to the event.Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
In October, Wicked star Jonathan Bailey sat in the front row of Dior’s Paris Fashion Week show wearing a branded Dior quarter-zip sweater with a dress shirt, tie and jeans. It was easy to miss, but for anyone with an eye for men’s wear trends, it was a significant moment.
Perhaps best known as a staple of finance bros, golf dads and Stephen Harper in that infamous Christmas card photo, the quarter-zip would seem an unlikely candidate for stardom. Its rise to the forefront of fashion, however, has been a long time coming.
A month after the Dior show, American TikTok creator Jason Gyamfi went viral with a video of himself and a friend wearing matching navy quarter-zip sweaters and sipping iced matcha lattes. “We don’t do Nike Tech,” Gyamfi declared, referring to Nike’s popular line of fleece hoodies and joggers, a Gen Z streetwear staple.
“It’s straight quarter-zips and matchas around here.” Gyamfi’s video, a tongue-in-cheek commentary on performative white-collar professionalism, subsequently racked up more than 25 million views. A month after that, at Chanel’s Métiers d’art runway show in New York, a fawn-coloured quarter-zip appeared among the luxury house’s latest offerings.
Like most modern casual men’s wear, the quarter-zip and its fraternal twin, the half-zip, originated in the military. “So much of what we think of as classic men’s wear comes from military surplus,” said Avery Trufelman, whose podcast, Articles of Interest, details how a glut of leftover military gear after the Second World War laid the groundwork for modern megabrands such as Patagonia and Lululemon. Such was the case with the quarter-zip, which was conceived as a military mid-layer with a zipper that allowed for easier temperature regulation in the field.
Over the following decades, the quarter-zip would evolve from army surplus in the 1950s to collegiate sportswear in the ‘60s to high-end performance wear in the ‘70s. With its connotations of sporty affluence, the quarter-zip proved an easy way for the burgeoning class of young urban professionals to embody the look of the country club set.
After establishing itself among the would-be elites of the 1980s, the quarter-zip reached its zenith in the ‘90s thanks to the rise of hip-hop culture, which favoured sportswear from prep-coded brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Nautica and Polo Ralph Lauren.
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As with any trend that burns brightly, the quarter-zip had nowhere to go from there but down. As office dress codes loosened toward the turn of the millennium, the quarter-zip found itself relegated to the bland, fluorescent-lit realm of pleated khakis and square-toed slip-ons – the kind of thing The Office’s Michael Scott might wear on a date. There it would remain, more or less, for the next two decades, eventually being adopted as the unofficial uniform of bankers, tech CEOs and other regulars at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference.
According to Jeremy Watt, co-founder of Toronto-based leisure wear brand Province of Canada, the renaissance of the quarter-zip and half-zip – titles that are now often used interchangeably – can be credited in large part to a prevailing nostalgia for all things 1990s among Gen Z. “You can look for trends in terms of what subcultures are thrifting,” he said. “People are wearing old-school Ralph Lauren and Hilfiger half-zips, and they’re wearing them bigger and boxier. Then some tastemakers make that move, and the fashion world remixes it.”
Province of Canada makes two half-zip styles in more than a dozen colours and, according to Watt, they now outsell almost everything else in the brand’s extensive catalogue. “Blank T-shirts are usually a big seller, but the half-zips aren’t far behind,” he said. “We’ve been doing well with them for the past four or five years, but all of a sudden they’re a big thing.”
Jeremy Watt, co-founder of leisurewear brand Province of Canada, says its half-zips outsell almost everything else in his catalogue.Province of Canada/Supplied
As white-collar workers make their way back to the office, the quarter/half-zip seems primed to return along with them, once again providing a comfortable middle-ground between dressy and casual. “The quarter-zip was an uncool thing for such a long period of time, but as we move into this casual, anti-suit culture, it can be part of a really elegant look,” said Mike Paul Neufville, owner of Toronto-based tailoring shop Mike Paul Atelier. “You can layer it in a casual way, or you can wear it in a very sartorial way underneath a sports jacket. It’s really versatile.”
Of course, the quarter-zip isn’t just a sporty yet stylish mid-layer, and hasn’t been for at least 50 years. Whether rendered in cotton or cashmere, the quarter-zip’s reputation – and decades of cultural baggage – precedes it. “It’s very aspirational,” said Trufelman. “Americans like to imagine that there’s no class and we all dress the same, but obviously we don’t. What everybody really wants to be is upper-middle class.”