Best Women's Shirts: Striped Cashmere, Linen and Embroidered Button-Ups

The striped polo is back, but not as sportswear. Guest In Residence's Showtime striped cashmere shirt swaps the usual cotton mesh for cashmere, which changes the entire register from country club to evening. Rabanne's embellished striped woven polo shirt pushes further, adding embellishment to a shape that used to signal only tennis whites. What used to be a locker-room basic now reads as considered, textured, a little formal. The stripe stays, but the fabric and the beading do the work of making it feel new.

Linen shirts have stopped being a beach afterthought and started acting like real tops. Onia's tie-front linen-blend shirt ties at the waist instead of hanging loose, giving it a shape you can wear past the pool. Simkhai's Callie embroidered linen-blend shirt adds detail at the collar and cuff, the kind of touch that used to be reserved for silk. Both hold onto linen's characteristic wrinkle rather than fighting it, treating the texture as the point. The result is a shirt that looks considered even when it is rumpled.

The baby tee, once a Y2K punchline, has quietly become a wardrobe basic again minus the irony. Made Some's La Isla Ibiza cotton baby T-shirt keeps the cropped, second-skin fit but trades the logo graphics for plain cotton, which reads more grown-up. Significant Other's Carrey twisted jersey mini T-shirt dress takes the same fitted shape and stretches it into a dress, proof the silhouette works past the crop top. Both lean on jersey and cotton rather than anything synthetic, which keeps the look feeling current instead of costume-y. The shape is small, but the styling around it has matured.

Oversized shirting has found its way to sheer wool gauze, a fabric that sounds like a contradiction until you see it layered. Tibi's sheer wool gauze check oversized shirt is cut roomy enough to wear over a T-shirt, with the check pattern reading through the transparency rather than hiding under it. That layering logic extends to knits too: Zulu & Zephyr's striped cotton-linen knit shirt is built to sit under something sheer rather than stand alone. The oversized shirt has become a topper, not a top. It only works because the piece beneath it is doing the covering, texture stacked on texture instead of one loud print.

This edit is really a study in what counts as a shirt right now, and the answer is almost anything with a collar or a hem that behaves like one. The striped polo, the linen button-up, the baby tee and the sheer oversized check are all doing different jobs, but they share a logic: one graphic piece, worn with restraint everywhere else. Cashmere and embellishment turn the polo formal. Linen's wrinkle becomes a feature instead of a flaw. The baby tee grows up by trading logos for plain cotton and letting the fit speak. If you take one thing away, let it be that the shirt is the one piece worth being deliberate about this season, since everything else in the outfit is built to support it, not compete with it. I would start with the linen.