Shirtless Goes the City

California strikes. Manhattan is becoming Malibu. Once, in the long-gone “Mad Men” days, it was considered de rigueur for New Yorkers to wear a hat and gloves in town. Now dress codes have devolved to the point where folks wear fleecy slippers on the subway, flip-flops to the ballet, running tights for every occasion, repurposed pajamas as daywear and, recently, very little at all.

We are referring here to a curious trend among men in the city to go walking about without shirts.

Note, for instance, recent tabloid pictures showing Orlando Bloom strolling through TriBeCa with his dog on a leash and son in a stroller. The British actor was dressed in shower shoes, a baseball cap and cargo shorts slung low enough to brand-check his red briefs and to see a solar tattoo inked south of his navel. And that was about all.

Sure it was hot. Temperatures had been hovering in the 90s for seven days running. Furnace blasts radiated off sidewalks. To stand on a subway platform felt like getting too close to a Weber grill.

Naked above the waist, Mr. Bloom was doing what a sensible person might to stay cool, if that person lived on the Pacific Coast Highway and was headed to Malibu Country Mart for an iced cappuccino.

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