The Tube Top Is the Ultimate Reemergence Look

Kendall Jenner is on a tube top kick. Last night, Kendall Jenner stepped out in a taupe version with dark orange leather pants by DROMe and square-toe boots while out in Los Angeles, and just a few days ago she opted for a bright orange one with black leather pants. Jenner is right in step with the sartorial mood right now. There’s something in the air. Perhaps, it’s the optimism surrounding re-emergence, and hope for a balmy summer. As the world is inching towards some facsimile of normalcy, people are dressing in less, but more wild, clothing. So why not a tube top? Unlike a tank top, a tube comes with an element of danger. Sans a strap and by the grace of the laws of physics, it riskily stays up.

My idea tube top looks range from a minimalist Sarah Jessica Parker wearing a grey version during her early Sex and the City Days and to Mariah Carey for her Honey album cover from 1997, in which she wears a golden tube top. You could even take it a step further with a bandeau. In this case, I think about Toni Braxton in the music video “He Wasn’t Man Enough For Me” when she is gyrating in an itty-bitty optic white top. On the runway, I’m brought back to the Fall 1998 Chloé show by Stella McCartney, when Eva Herzigova walked in a cinched light blue tube top. In Spring 2000, the elevated crop top that was beaded in rows across once again appeared at McCartney’s Chloe. It was all the bit saucy.

Fast-forward roughly 20 years later, the look feels especially tempting to try, thanks to Jenner. A few runways agree, too. Khaite’s pre-fall 2021 lookbook showed model Sasha Pivovarova in a simple black tube top, while Blumarine Y2K-drenched spring 2021 showed paper-thin tube tops with lace trims.

There is something both liberating and incredibly stylish about going strapless so give me a tube top this summer. I want to show my arms, and if it happens to ride up a bit on my stomach, so be it. Let’s just pray it doesn’t fall down.