When That Summer Heat Kicks In, These "Naked" Tops Are My MVPs

We're only at the start of June, but things are just heating up. Sure, it's hot now, but what about next month when things really get scorching? Next to turning up my AC on full blast and drinking all of the frozen drinks I can stomach, my approach to beating the heat is wearing less. Since walking out naked is socially unacceptable, the next best thing in my closet is open-back tops.

With an exposed back, these tops feel like a wave of relief on a hot summer day. When you're walking outside and even the slightest movement spawns a cascade of sweat, at least you can bet your upper half will stay relatively cool. But the appeal is not entirely functional: Open-back tops are one of the biggest trends of the summer. In preparation for the unbearably warm days ahead, I've already tallied a list of cute ones, so you can skip the hours of browsing for yourself. Ahead, keep clicking to shop what I predict will also be your seasonal hot-weather MVP.

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(Image credit: @stonelabel)

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(Image credit: @laurencrowe88)

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(Image credit: @sasha.mei)

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(Image credit: @discodaydream)

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(Image credit: @emiliamuss)

Coming up: I Shop for a Living—These Are the Under-$100 Summer Items Too Good to Pass Up

Fashion Market Editor

Indya Brown is a fashion editor, stylist, and writer living in Los Angeles. While going to school at Columbia University in New York City, she got her feet wet in the fashion industry interning at Elle magazine, Harper's Bazaar, and New York magazine's The Cut. After graduating in 2016, she joined The Cut as a fashion assistant, eventually working her way up to fashion editor. There, she worked on a multitude of projects, including styling inbook feature stories for New York magazine's print issue, writing and pitching market stories for The Cut, and serving as fashion lead for The Cut's branded content. While New York has been her home for over 10 years, she moved to Los Angeles in the midst of the pandemic in 2020 for a new chapter. Now she is a fashion market editor for Who What Wear, focusing on emerging designers, rising trends on and off the internet, interior design, and BIPOC creatives and brands. Aside from her duties as a fashion market editor, Brown is also a freelance stylist and writer, working on national print and video commercial campaigns for Sephora, The Independent, and Cadillac. Her bylines also include Harper's Bazaar, Vox, and The New York Times. But once the computer goes down and the emails turn off, she's likely eating her way through Koreatown, hunting down vintage furniture, scoping out new outrageous nail designs to try, or taking a hot cycling class.