Got a fear of shorts? It’s all about choosing the right shirt | Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion

I’m scared of shorts. They make me nervous. This is clearly a bit silly. I mean, it’s not like they are actually going to bite me on the bum. But then fear is seldom rational. If I see a spider in the sink, it doesn’t help at all to know that it isn’t going to hurt me. And I’m not alone in my borderline shorts-phobia. After all, it is perfectly normal to talk about being brave enough to wear shorts.

This is not just about the brevity of a hemline. Shorts that end halfway up your thighs feels like a more radical choice than a dress that exposes the same amount of leg. Naked dressing has been increasingly normalised – see-through dresses, ab-baring crop tops – but shorts still feel daring in any context outside a holiday.

But that is changing. I think this is partly because we are realising that dressing more sustainably is best served by having fewer, more versatile clothes. Instead of buying a new dress when you get invited to a wedding or filling a suitcase with jelly shoes and beach cover-ups that have zero utility outside your week on the beach, work towards a streamlined modern wardrobe whose pieces can be mixed and matched in different ways. The most important metric of sustainability is to make everything you own work hard, extracting maximum wear from it.

There is a second reason why now is the right time for shorts to go mainstream. This has been the year of trousers. Proper, tailored trousers – not jeans, nothing stretchy – have been the biggest fashion story of 2024. And yes, I know cowboy boots have had more column inches, but the pivot from wearing longish skirts and dresses to wearing trousers matters more. This has been the key real-talk shift in women’s wardrobes recently.

Getting the hang of wearing trousers that aren’t jeans has helped me to get my head around wearing shorts that aren’t jean shorts. We tend to imagine shorts as a cut-off version of whatever trousers we are used to wearing. This is why, for years and years, denim cut-offs were the only shorts game in town, because jeans were the dominant trousers in our wardrobe. The shift from jeans to trousers has brought cotton or linen shorts that have their own shape, rather than just hugging yours, back into play.

I spent the first six months of this year wearing trousers with shirts most weekdays. I have found this to be a brilliant uniform: enough variation that getting dressed still feels like a choice, but with guardrails to keep choice from escalating into indecision and indecision spiralling into a fully fledged wardrobe crisis.

But in high summer I don’t want to wear the same clothes I wore six months ago. Not just because they are too hot, but because I want to feel like it’s summer even when – actually, especially when – the content of my work day is not all that different from winter. Clothes are one of the ways we get to feel summery, and on those days when you are in the office with your inbox peppered with other people’s OOOs, you need to take your summer vibes wherever you can.

Shorts and a shirt, then. Shorts and a T-shirt seems more suited to one of the Famous Five than to a woman in her fifties, and a shirt never fails to feel purposeful. A coordinating shirt and shorts is fun without being silly (like this white linen look from Cos) – you could wear it to the office, but you could also wear it as a travel outfit when you go on holiday, and then both pieces would be useful while you are away.

To shop the look from your wardrobe, find the shorts first. Your basic sightseeing-on-a-hot-day linen shorts will do just fine. Then find a shirt that matches them in some way – it could be a straight-up shade match, or another linen piece but in a different colour, or it could be a striped shirt if your shorts are striped (to channel the French Connection look pictured). Add a chunky flat shoe and jewellery, and you are good to go. Are we brave enough? Deep breath. I will if you will.

Model: Kitty Su at Milk. Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Ouai and Dr Sam’s skincare. Styling assistants: Sam Deaman and Nyima Jobe. Top, £39, and shorts, £25, both French Connection. Sandals, £89, John Lewis. Blue bead necklace €80, and purple necklace with bear, €300, both Crystal Haze