At the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund awards last month, where the red carpet teemed with actresses and designers dressed in complicated evening numbers of varying slits and cuts, the designer Rachel Roy was covered neck to toe in a floor-length black skirt from her own collection and a sheer, flesh-colored turtleneck by Stella McCartney. “I find that the turtleneck has one of the chicest silhouettes,” Roy said later by phone. “I don’t always have to show a lot of skin, but what I do want to show all the time is a lot of brains. And the turtleneck is strong, elegant, smart. I’m a turtleneck believer.” As it happens, the evening’s winner, Joseph Altuzarra, who showed turtlenecks in lightweight cable knit for fall and cropped chartreuse for spring, has recently become a believer, too. “Sometimes when something has been away for so long, it’s interesting to try to rework it and make it appealing again,” he said. Designers like Michael Kors and Donna Karan have often resurrected the classic turtleneck, fashionable in the 1970s among the likes of Gloria Steinem and Diane Keaton. But now, it is Altuzarra and his youthful peers who are applying their wit and whimsy to a garment that, if it weren’t for its practicality, would never have existed in the first place, a garment that actually encourages women to – it’s right there in the name – withdraw into a shell. For fall, Olivier Theyskens showed heavy knit turtlenecks with full-legged pants and shorts in his Theory collection; a chin-reaching, futuristic version was presented at Ohne Titel; and Dries van Noten paired several oversize turtlenecks with his signature vivid prints. Chalk it up to a need for a little sartorial dignity in an overly confessional culture; or to the grass-is-greener yearning for a cozy, cold-weather garment when 60-degree temperatures have steadily been reported on the East Coast; or even to Steve Jobs, the enigmatic tech maverick, whose recent death was cited by the knitwear label St. Croix as a reason that sales of its $175 turtleneck doubled overnight. (According to Jobs’ authorized biography, it was Issey Miyake who designed his shirts.) “I can’t keep enough of them in my store,” said Ikram Goldman, the proprietor of her namesake boutique in Chicago, referring to a lightweight version by Celine. “Shoppers just love it.” According to street-style photos, celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Rihanna and Alexa Chung love it, too, perhaps as another way to deflect the prying eyes of the paparazzi; and the actress Elizabeth Olsen recently wore a sleeveless Alexander McQueen turtleneck dress to the New York Film Festival premiere of her film, “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”

Turtlenecks In The Past

The turtleneck first emerged in the late 1800s, as an undergarment worn by college athletes and later, the military. In the 1950s, the beatniks co-opted it as a symbol of intellectual bohemia, the style reaching its apogee by the time a black-turtlenecked Audrey Hepburn did her modern dance, all long limbs and jagged angles, in “Funny Face.”