Casablanca, Explained: The Silk Shirts, the Knit Polos, the Sneakers and How They Fit

Casablanca is the Paris label Charaf Tajer founded in 2018, and its best piece is still the one it started with: a printed silk shirt with a Cuban collar. If you buy one Casablanca piece this season, make it a long-sleeved silk twill shirt with a dark ground, which you can wear under a jacket through the holidays and on its own somewhere warm in January. Add a knit polo or a track jacket next, and one of the house's tennis or skate sneakers after that. Below: the house's story and codes, each category worth buying, how Casablanca clothing fits, the women's collection and whether it is worth the money.

Casablanca Paris at a glance

Charaf Tajer and how Casablanca began

Tajer was born in Paris to parents of Moroccan descent and grew up in Belleville, in the east of the city, spending childhood summers in Casablanca. The label is named after the city where his parents met while working in a couture atelier, according to Casablanca's own history of the house. Before Casablanca, he co-founded the Paris label Pigalle with Stéphane Ashpool in 2008 and opened the nightclub Le Pompon in 2010, as El País recounted in a 2022 profile.

Casablanca launched on October 31, 2018, with a spring 2019 collection called Casablanca Tennis Club: T-shirts, silk shirts, terrycloth tracksuits and tailored suits, made in Casablanca, as FashionUnited reported on launch day. The first full collection followed at Paris men's fashion week for fall 2019. In 2020 the label was one of eight joint winners of the LVMH Prize and added womenswear, then leather goods, jewelry, eyewear and footwear, along with collaborations with New Balance, the luggage maker Globe-Trotter, the Paris caviar house Caviar Kaspia and Bulgari, which the house calls its first partnership with a major luxury house. Today it works with specialist partners chosen, it says, for one material or technique each.

The first Casablanca store opened in June 2025 on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, and a Beverly Hills flagship followed that November. As of October 2026, Tajer is still founder and creative director. His spring 2027 collection, Amor e Progresso, rewrites the motto on Brazil's flag with love in place of order, and was shown this fall at Espace Niemeyer, the French Communist Party's headquarters designed by Oscar Niemeyer, near Belleville. Tajer passed the building every day on his way to school, he told Complex the day before the show. "I have no problem wearing colour," he said, and that sentence explains most of the clothes.

The Casablanca look: tennis club, après-sport and the prints

Casablanca describes its mood as après-sport: tennis, leisure and travel, in a palette taken from clay courts and tennis whites. In the clothes, that comes down to four codes:

• The court. Tennis Club crests, the house's tennis-triangle motif and, worked into prints such as Tennis Club and the Ladurée château, a tennis court.
• The paintings. Painted landscapes, most of them imagined. The current collections look to Egypt: the Tennis Club print sets pyramids, palms and an ibis against a Nile sunrise, and Hotel Emblem draws on Cairo's grand hotels.
• The logos. A small diamond logo patch on knits and zip pulls, the interlocking CC monogram woven into jacquard and printed on silk, and the stacked CASA BLANCA wordmark.
• The finish. Wave-shaped stripes along collars and cuffs, buttons of corozo (a hard palm nut) stamped with the CC, and gold-rimmed enamel or pearl buttons at the cuffs.

How to wear the prints without looking in costume

Casablanca's lookbooks pile print on print, which works on a runway and rarely on a Tuesday. Our stylists' rules:

1. One print per outfit. A printed shirt, then plain trousers, a plain knit and plain shoes.
2. Repeat one color from the print, once. A green Radiating Monogram shirt with the green heel of a Del Mar sneaker looks deliberate; three matching accents look like a team kit.
3. Dark grounds in winter. Navy, black and deep green prints sit naturally under wool; keep the pastel landscapes for warm weather and spring.
4. Long sleeves under a jacket. A short-sleeved silk shirt under tailoring looks like a summer leftover.
5. Mind the collar. The Cuban collar is cut to lie open. Wear it under a cardigan, a track jacket or an open blazer, not a crewneck sweater, where the two necklines fight.
6. Keep the matching set for holidays. A silk shirt with its own shorts belongs at a pool or a beach dinner, not in the city by day.

The Casablanca shirt: silk twill, a Cuban collar and a painted print

This is the piece the house is built on. A Casablanca silk shirt is made in Italy from silk twill (the Ladurée collaboration uses silk satin), with a Cuban-style collar, corozo buttons stamped with the CC and, on most styles, gold-rimmed enamel buttons at the cuffs. The listings call the fit relaxed; the models wearing a medium stand between 6 feet and 6 feet 2.

Which one? If it will be your only Casablanca shirt, choose Astrology: its navy ground, drawn with gold constellations and brightening to blue at the hem, reads as dark from across a room and sits easily under navy, charcoal or black. Tennis Club is the house in one garment, a pastel Nile sunrise over pyramids, palms and a tennis court; wear it with white or ecru trousers and white sneakers. Géométrie Sacrée, a temple scene in saturated blues and orange, is the loudest here and best on its own. The Casa Kaspia New York shirt, from the house's second capsule with Caviar Kaspia, paints coffee cups and yellow cabs on a blue gradient.

Three practical notes. Several styles come in Tall XXL or Tall XXXL, useful if a standard shirt is short on you. Every silk shirt here is labeled specialist dry clean only, so between cleanings hang it on a broad hanger and steam out creases from the inside on a low setting rather than pressing the print. And copies exist: the Complex writer who interviewed Tajer admitted to buying a fake Casablanca shirt in Melbourne. Buy from the house or one of its stockists, and treat a cheap Casablanca silk shirt found anywhere else as a copy. Other houses' prints are among our designer casual shirts.

Short-sleeved silk shirts and their matching shorts, for winter sun

Many of the short-sleeved shirts have a pair of silk shorts cut from the same print, and the listings for the Radiating Monogram pair say each half is designed to be worn with the other. As a set, it is the outfit for a Christmas week in the Caribbean: shirt open over a white tank, terry slides. Split up, the pair is more useful than it looks. The shirt goes with white linen trousers at a beach dinner, and the shorts with a plain white T-shirt by day.

The black and deep green Radiating Monogram pairs are the easiest to wear apart; the blue Egyptian Rug and Trompe L'Oeil prints are holiday pieces. Order the shorts in your usual size: the waist is elasticated and the fit relaxed.

Casablanca knitwear: the knit polo is the house's best fall piece

If the silk shirt is Casablanca on holiday, the knit polo is Casablanca in November. The house makes several kinds, and they wear differently:

• Waffle stitch, in wool with a quarter zip and contrast trim: textured enough to stand alone.
• Logo knit, in merino with the Casablanca name worked in a small repeat: a long-sleeved style in dark brown and a short-sleeved one in beige.
• Merino tennis polo, slim and zip-fronted, designed, the listing says, to go with a matching merino track jacket and trousers.
• Bouclé, in cotton and nylon, the one knit polo here labeled for a delicate machine wash.

A long-sleeved knit polo replaces a shirt and tie under a jacket, the easiest way to look dressed at a holiday party without a suit (our men's holiday party outfit guide covers each dress code). Try the white bouclé polo with the carbon pleated trousers and white leather sneakers, or the dark brown logo polo with ecru jeans and a cream overcoat. The navy Hotel Emblem cardigan carries some of the house's best embroidery, but its listing contradicts itself, on the house's own site too: wool in the name, 63% viscose and 37% nylon in the composition. Confirm the fiber before you buy it for warmth. For quieter knit polos with no graphics, see Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli; for a classic cotton piqué tennis polo, Lacoste. More knit polos are in our designer polo shirt edit.

Track jackets and the après-sport tracksuit

The zip track jacket is Casablanca's sportswear at its most direct, and the fabric decides where it can go. Merino and the cotton-wool Café Culture jackets from the fall 2026 collection are the smartest and fit under a coat. Velour is softer and louder; the striped green and the dark brown velour jackets both have matching track pants. The dark teal monogram jacquard, made in Italy, is the dressiest, the pale blue piqué is pure tennis club. The warmest is the Café Culture wool fleece, white with dark brown sleeves.

As a full tracksuit, it is a travel and weekend outfit: one set, a plain white T-shirt, white sneakers, nothing else branded. Broken up, a track jacket over a silk shirt with tailored wool trousers is the house's mix of sportswear and tailoring in one outfit. Wear the dark brown velour jacket with its own track pants, or with cream or ecru trousers and white sneakers. Check the care labels: the striped velour is dry clean only, the brown velour machine washable on a delicate cycle. Browse more designer bomber and track jackets.

Casablanca outerwear: varsity, blouson and down

The varsity jacket is the house's best outerwear piece this fall: a body of 360gsm Italian wool, sleeves in lamb nappa, Celestial Pyramid embroidery on the chest and yellow-striped rib trims, made in Italy. The listing says to order your usual size. Over a gray hoodie, ecru jeans and white sneakers it looks right on a cold Saturday; we would not wear it with navy, blue denim or black, so keep the rest of the outfit cream, gray or olive.

The monogram cotton blouson and the workwear safari jacket are made in Italy from the house's monogram cotton, and their listings allow a delicate machine wash. Among the down jackets, the hooded puffer, whose hood detaches, and the quilted vest carry the house monogram, quilted in large curves across the shell; the glossy lacquered puffer is plain, with a two-way zip. The hooded green-and-navy check fleece, a brushed blend half wool and mohair, is the loudest jacket here. The listings give a fill of 90% down and 10% feather but no fill power, so treat them as city jackets; for mountain cold, look at Moncler. For evenings, the off-white Hotel Emblem bomber in viscose satin does what a velvet jacket does, with less ceremony.

Tailoring: what Casablanca means by Neapolitan

Casablanca says it pairs luxury sportswear with traditional Neapolitan tailoring. Read that as a point of view rather than a statement of origin: the tailored pieces we checked are made in Portugal, Lithuania and the UK, and their listings describe slim, structured cuts with sport built in.

• The dark teal double-breasted suit, in 183gsm Italian wool with peak lapels, working cuffs and double vents. The matching trousers close with side adjusters instead of belt loops.
• The black sports jacket, a zip-front wool jacket with a point collar, and slim wool trousers with a logo-taped waistband, both made in Lithuania.
• The carbon pleated trousers, in a wool twill dark enough to read as black, are the most useful single piece here; wear them with the white, cream or navy knits above.
• The green sports suit, single-breasted with a white stripe from shoulder to cuff and matching drawstring trousers. It is cotton and polyamide, made in the UK and machine washable, the one suit here that travels.

For a holiday party, wear the teal suit with the navy Astrology shirt open at the neck and black leather shoes. For a long lunch, wear the green sports suit with a white T-shirt and white-and-green Del Mars. Tailoring is sized in European numbers; a 48 is a medium in Casablanca's chart.

Casablanca sneakers: Del Mar, Stade, Court and Squash

Casablanca's sneakers are made in Portugal, and four lines matter:

• Del Mar, named, according to the listing, after a famous 1980s California skatepark and modeled on late-1970s and early-1980s skate shoes: canvas and leather panels, a rubber toe cap, a flat sole and chunky laces. Buy it first, in white with green or white with navy.
• Stade, a runner named after the ancient Greek measure for the length of a foot race. Its sculpted sole recalls the house's Atlantis shoe, and its upper is textile with vegan suede, not leather.
• Court Championship and Squash Indoor, the tennis and squash shapes in leather and textile. Both listings say they fit true to size.
• Khopesh, a slim lace-up in leather and textile, with ribbon loops.

The listings say to wipe them with a soft cloth: dry for most styles, damp for the Court Championship and Squash Indoor. For how Casablanca's sneakers compare with white leather court shoes and suede trainers from other houses, see our guide to the best designer sneakers for men, or browse all designer low-top sneakers.

How Casablanca clothing fits

Casablanca uses letter sizes for most of its clothing, and its size guide converts them directly:

• Men's letter sizes run from XS to XXXL, which the chart equates with European 44 to 56 and US 34 to 46. A medium is a European 48 and a US 38, with a 96-centimeter (about 38-inch) chest and an 88-centimeter (about 34.5-inch) trouser waist.
• Tailoring uses the European numbers themselves, and jeans use waist sizes in inches.
• Sneakers are listed in US sizes. Casablanca's chart puts a US 9 at a UK 8.5 and a European 42.5, for a foot 27 centimeters long. That is half a size between UK and US, while the English shoemaker Tricker's puts a UK 8 at a US 9, a full size apart, so convert from Casablanca's chart, not from your English shoes.
• T-shirts changed in spring 2025. The listings say the T-shirt sizing was updated from that season: order your usual size, or size down if you want the fit of an older Casablanca T-shirt.

Most clothing listings say whether the cut is relaxed or slim and give the model's height and size. Silk shirts, track jackets and most polos are relaxed; the merino tennis polo, the long-sleeved bouclé polo and the tailoring are slim. Our rule of thumb between sizes: in a relaxed piece take the smaller, in a slim one the larger. If a standard size is short in the body, look for the tall sizes on the shirt and polo listings.

Casablanca for women

Casablanca added womenswear in 2020, and the women's collection uses the same codes in its own cuts: silk shirts with Cuban collars in sizes XXS to XL, knit tennis polo dresses and mini skirts, a varsity jacket, a cropped puffer and the Del Mar sneaker in women's sizes. The women's chart runs from XXS to XXL, which it equates with European 32 to 44 and US 0 to 12, so a small is a US 4. In sneakers, a women's US 7 is a European 37.

Three outfits we like. The black Degrade Monogram silk shirt half-tucked into the navy merino mini skirt, with opaque black tights and white Del Mars. The cream-and-navy knit tennis polo dress under the black cropped puffer, which turns a summer dress into a November one. And the brown varsity jacket over the cream logo sweater with ecru jeans and white sneakers. The green and navy check silk shirt also has matching silk trousers, for a printed set at a holiday dinner. For trips somewhere warm, our resort wear guide covers the rest of the suitcase.

Is Casablanca worth it?

For some pieces, yes. Here is how we would spend the money.

• Worth it: the silk shirts. Roughly a thousand dollars buys Italian silk twill, original artwork that changes every season and details many printed shirts skip, from the corozo buttons to the gold-rimmed enamel buttons at the cuffs. Printed silk shirts from Versace, Etro and Dries Van Noten are the useful comparison: Casablanca's prints are more pictorial, closer to a painting than a pattern.
• Worth it: the knit polos and the sneakers. The polo is the house's most wearable piece, and the sneakers, at roughly $450 to $600, cost less than most of Casablanca's clothing.
• Buy once and keep: a long-sleeved silk shirt with a dark ground, a navy merino polo and a white Del Mar. These three survive changes in the house's seasonal artwork.
• A one-season pleasure: the graphic T-shirts and sweatshirts, the collaboration capsules and the brightest matching sets. The T-shirts are organic cotton made in Portugal, and what you pay for is mostly the drawing. Buy one if the artwork means something to you.
• Skip it if your wardrobe is all navy and gray and you want it to stay that way. Casablanca is for men who like color.

Not sure which print works with what you already own? Ask our AI stylist to build three outfits around one shirt.

How we chose

Every piece we picked comes from Casablanca's own store, which has sold on Vêtir since the end of September 2026; we took none from other stockists, and none is pre-owned. We favored the house's signatures over novelties: Italian silk shirts with Cuban collars, wool and merino knit polos, track jackets with their matching trousers, wool tailoring and four sneaker lines. We looked at the photograph of every piece, because a listing's color name and the print on the cloth do not always agree, and we read each listing for fiber, care label, country of making and fit note. We passed over pieces with only one or two sizes left when a similar style had a full run, and left the logo T-shirts and swim shorts for a summer edit. Prices run from the mid-$400s for sneakers to under $2,000 for the varsity jacket.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Casablanca, and who designs it now?

Charaf Tajer, who was born in Paris to parents of Moroccan descent, founded Casablanca in Paris in 2018. He is still its founder and creative director: his spring 2027 collection, Amor e Progresso, was shown in Paris this fall.

Is Casablanca a luxury brand?

Yes. It is a Paris ready-to-wear house that was one of eight joint winners of the 2020 LVMH Prize, and it is stocked by Le Bon Marché and Galeries Lafayette in Paris and Selfridges in London, among others. Its silk shirts cost around a thousand dollars and are made in Italy.

Do Casablanca shirts run big?

The silk shirts are cut relaxed, so they feel roomy if you wear slim shirts. Order your usual size and, between two, take the smaller. A medium is a US 38 in Casablanca's chart.

Do Casablanca sneakers run true to size?

The listings for the Court Championship, the Squash Indoor and several Del Mar styles say they fit true to size. They are sold in US sizes, and Casablanca's chart puts a US 9 at a UK 8.5 and a European 42.5.

How do you wash a Casablanca silk shirt?

Don't: every silk shirt in this guide is labeled specialist dry clean only. Between cleanings, hang it and steam it on low from the inside.

Where is Casablanca made?

It depends on the piece. According to the house's listings, the silk shirts are made in Italy, the sneakers and T-shirts in Portugal, the knits and down jackets in China, and the tailoring in Portugal, Lithuania and the UK.

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