As I’m wearing a quarter-zip jumper and sipping on an iced matcha, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s my last day of term before the school holidays. The giveaway is it’s a Saturday in London’s Soho, and I’m surrounded by 20 or so young men between the ages of 13 and 21 who are all here for London’s first ever “quarter-zip meetup”.
Organised, rather bizarrely, by sibling rappers OKay the Duo, the meetup is the latest manifestation of a growing tongue-in-cheek trend for quarter-zips and matcha that has taken over TikTok globally. Previous meetups have taken place in Houston and Rotterdam.
The trend started when Jason Gyamfi, a computer science graduate, posted a video on TikTok of him and his friend Richard Minor showing off their quarter-zips. In his video, Gyamfi, the self-proclaimed “founder of the quarter-zip movement”, says: “We don’t do Nike Tech. We don’t do coffee. It’s straight quarter-zips and matchas around here.”
The video has more than 30m views and spawned a “movement” that sees young, predominantly black men swapping the popular Nike Tech fleece – a snug tracksuit with a chevron across the body and the iconic swoosh on the chest – for a quarter-zip of any colour and from any brand, though a navy cable knit from Ralph Lauren won’t hurt.
The subtext is that quarter-zips, often associated with white, middle-class finance bros – or Rishi Sunak – signify professionalism, while Nike Techs, often associated with black, working-class men living in cities, represent criminality. To wear a quarter-zip, these videos say, is to complete your transformation from a “hoodlum” into something more respectable.
At the London meetup, Seph and his friend David emphasise the connotations of a Nike Tech fleece versus a quarter-zip. To Seph, these fleeces are associated with “gangs and essentially black people, if I’m being honest with you”. To David, quarter-zips and matcha “represent maturity”. Wearing a quarter-zip and sipping matcha seems to be tied to a desire to defy racial stereotypes and grow into men accepted by the dominant culture.
Many of the young people at the meetup, hyper-aware of how they may be perceived, feel the same way. “I used to wear Nike Techs every day,” says 16-year-old Ola Adams. “I actually still have some in my wardrobe.” His friends jeer upon hearing this. He continues: “But after today it’s making me reconsider my life decisions. It’s a lot easier to communicate with people when they don’t stereotype you based on what you’re wearing.”
It’s the latest iteration of a trend that’s been growing steadily over the last few years: the casualisation of office wear, accelerated by the pandemic. According to Prof Andrew Groves, director of the Westminster Menswear Archive, the pullover, originally a part of gym and ski wear in the 1930s, has “become the default business-casual layer because it reads smart without being formal. It works across work and leisure, which has always been the point.”
According to John Lewis, searches for men’s quarter-zips are up 425% this year, but it’s a trend that spans womenswear too. The opening look at Matthieu Blazy’s first Métiers d’Art collection at Chanel included a beige quarter-zipper.
The quarter-zip I’m wearing today is by Ralph Lauren. It’s not my first, which was a warm, grey one from Arket, which I bought for my first job in 2023 as a way of showing I was mature without trying too hard – the sartorial equivalent of a digestive biscuit. Described by GQ as “a joyless jumper for the joyless grind”, the quarter-zip attracted few comments at work as it represented belonging. But outside the workplace it won me compliments when I wore it with a white T and jeans, particularly from women I dated.
This is part of the appeal for some of the teenage boys I speak to at the meetup, who see the movement as an extension of the performative male phenomenon. This involves young men knowingly adopting interests typically associated with femininity – such as drinking matcha, listening to Clairo and wearing tote bags – in the hope of attracting progressive women. They proudly tell me about their love of feminism, literature and feminist literature, couched in irony typical of a chronically online generation.
The trend offers an aspirational version of masculinity that blends the softness of the performative male with the power of a finance bro. It’s also an appealing image in the face of heteropessimism – characterised by a sense of embarrassment, particularly among straight women, regarding heterosexual relationships – and high unemployment among graduates. Maybe by wearing a quarter-zip, you can manifest the life you really want to lead instead of succumbing to the doom and gloom surrounding you.
For Andrew Amoako – a wealth management associate and content creator responsible for the Making It Out TikTok series, which pokes fun at corporate culture while showing people from underprivileged backgrounds the benefits of the corporate world – the quarter zip trend is also about social mobility.
“When you stop wearing Tech fleeces and you start wearing quarter-zips, it means you’ve probably got a better job,” he says. But he’s quick to point out that he still wears tracksuits when meeting friends. “Some people in the [quarter-zip] movement are stigmatising the Tech fleece. I play on that satirical element, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wearing a tracksuit.”
Still, the pitfalls promoted by such respectability politics remain. By focusing on the way people are dressed, it disregards the role race plays in the social hierarchy. Some African Americans adopted an Ivy League style of dress to great effect during the civil rights movement to help them demand equality, but many of them were ultimately persecuted because of the colour of their skin.
Liza Betts, senior lecturer and researcher at the University of the Arts London, argues: “Very often it doesn’t matter about the clothing changes that are made, as value and legitimisation have been attached (or not) to the bodies themselves before the language of dress is invoked.” Take, for example, the fact that some working-class British people sported the high-fashion heritage brand Burberry’s nova check in the noughties to show their aspiration, but were still pejoratively labelled “chavs”. As Groves points out of the quarter-zip: “The same garment can read as professional, ironic, aspirational or threatening, depending on the wearer and the setting.”
Of course, the quarter-zip and matcha trend is supposed to be lighthearted, a bit of fun that may encourage some people to dress differently. But it’s important to challenge some of the stereotypes attached to particular items of clothing in the first place. A quarter-zip will be more appropriate in some situations, while a Nike Tech fleece will be more comfortable in others.It doesn’t need to be either or.