A ‘don’t text your ex’ shirt and divorce rings: Fashion leads a break-up paradigm shift

Talk of break-ups, falling out of love and other romantic dramas is no longer relegated to weepy R&B balladry. Nowadays, fashion is also taking its inspiration from tales of the ex. T-shirts with messages that allude to going one’s separate ways are now a growing trend which, like so many others in this day and age, had its first go-round in the 2000s. Those well-versed in pop culture will recall that in 2002, Britney Spears was photographed in a blue tee whose orange lettering spelled out “Dump him.” The Juicy Couture set the world aflame, worn as it was after Spears’ well-publicized break-up with performer Justin Timberlake.

Many years later in 2021, another pop star, Olivia Rodrigo, shared an image to social media that showed her wearing an identical shirt, unleashing a collective mania to track down where she had bought the garment. That same year on her worldwide Guts tour, Rodrigo bet heavily on message tees, sporting a different model at every concert. From Manila to Seoul, Los Angeles to Sydney, the California singer now has her fans guessing on what pithy phrase she’ll be emblazoned with at her next show. There have been winks to the city in which she’s performing (“I love pad thai”, read her shirt in Bangkok; “besitos” in Barcelona), pro-voting phrases and plays on words. The Rodrigo shirt that inspired the most headlines was perhaps the one she wore in March at her Chicago appearance, a white tee on which once again the words “Dump him” could be read, only this time in cursive. Taylor Swift has also hopped on the trend at some of her stadium shows with a short-sleeved model reiterating words from one of her beloved songs: “We are never getting back together. Like ever.”

“Trends come and go and message tees are proof. The 2000s were full of them, and they’ve become a phenomenon in recent seasons, paired with low-rise pants or printed onto a cropped top. Message tees are back,” says Candela Gómez, professional stylist. “We have lost any fear of labelling ourselves or showing how we feel: it no longer matters if people judge us,” she says reflecting on the proliferation of this kind of bold design. María Blanco, designer and co-founder of jewelry line Jane Bardot, agrees. She recently debuted a concept-heavy collection inspired by the idea of the ex. “I think that nowadays, there’s a trend of breaking with the stigmatization of one’s love coming to an end, and people are even taking advantage of it,” she says. “We are in an era of polyamory and ‘princesses’ who no longer cry in the corner over their ex, but rather, celebrate life with sassier messages.”

Italian businesswoman Chiara Ferragni didn’t miss the opportunity to throw a casual barb at her former partner Fedez this summer when she wore a white shirt emblazoned with the now-classic “dump him.” Rita Ora stepped up to the trend a few weeks ago with a nearly identical version of the aforementioned Juicy design. Hers was from the brand Cosmic, which specializes in 2000s tee recreations. Actress and singer Addison Rae, another centennial icon who employs fashion as eloquent expression, forecasted the trend’s revival back in 2021, when she was photographed in the Los Angeles streets wearing a model that said, “He said he wanted more space, so I locked him outside.” Pull & Bear, whose parent company is Spanish multinational Inditex, put out a shirt with the mantra oft-repeated by the friends of a dumpee: “Don’t text your ex.”

More cryptic was the lettering on a shirt in an image shared in September by Jennifer Lopez, who recently divorced Ben Affleck. “She is bloom and unbothered out of reach and in peace” it breathed, though the crop on her photo didn’t allow viewers to see if she was the one wearing the design.

For Gómez, the ideal outfit for sporting this look involves pairing one’s message tee with “a men’s blazer and some special accessory, like a belt or a tote bag.” She invokes “Julia Roberts in 2002″ for inspiration, harkening back to an era in which the actress was given to wearing her blazers with t-shirts featuring plays on words like “A low Vera,” a coy reference to Vera Steimberg, at the time wife of Daniel Moder, Roberts’ boyfriend who she eventually wound up marrying. Back then, Steimberg wasn’t willing to grant Moder a divorce.

Behind these simple shirts are often independent, accessibly priced brands. On many occasions, the garments only vary by small modifications to their typography and color, and nearly always come in the form of baby tees, short-sleeved numbers with an infantile vibe. Irony and sarcasm run rife throughout the trend, making the shirts a direct, obvious and highly visible way to reflect one’s break-up narrative. Indeed, it appears that the clothes and jewelry industries have begun to see the lucrative aspect of getting dumped. Brands like Jane Bardot are approaching the concept with a distinct sense of humor, as in the line’s MY EX earrings, which were launched with the goal of promoting an alternative approach to Valentine’s Day and created in collaboration with Acromatyx for “the day of the out-of-love, the formerly engaged, former partners, in celebration of diverse and inclusive love that even includes exes,” says Blanco. The pieces are “earrings formed by three engagement rings, implying that you collected all the engagement rings your exes have given you and made yourself some earrings. Things don’t always end badly with your ex, right? Even if you’re better off not remembering some of them.”

In other news from the world of “ex” jewelry, the brand Alison Lou rose to fame a few months ago when model Emily Ratajkowski shared what she called her “divorce ring” with her millions of online followers. That piece was a modified version of her engagement ring, designed by the same brand and transformed for her new era, after she broke things off with her partner in 2022. The concept gave rise to dozens of articles across all kinds of media, well beyond the realm of the fashion press, that analyzed the change it heralded in our way of dealing with break-ups and separations, a shift that has led to seeing them as a new beginning, rather than a failure.

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