Custom leavers' shirts become must-have school tradition for Year 11 students

Walk into any secondary school in Britain right now, and you'll find Year 11 students hunched over laptops and sketchbooks, designing shirts. Not the plain white ones their parents signed decades ago. These are custom creations—hand-painted, embroidered, studded with gems, printed with inside jokes and anime characters and logos of their favorite takeaways. The shirts have become the thing to have on leavers' day, the final marker of secondary school, and they're reshaping what it means to commemorate the end of an era.

The trend started quietly enough, shared across TikTok and Pinterest, but it has exploded into something genuinely commercial. Online marketplaces like Etsy now stock thousands of designs. Small businesses have sprouted to meet the demand. Shirts by Niamh, a TikTok account with more than 100,000 followers, charges up to £35 per shirt, offering everything from glitter and gems to spray paint and feathers. Sydney Evans, who works full-time creating leavers' shirts from Harlow in Essex, spends most of the year preparing for summer's rush—the few months when demand becomes so intense she's working through the nights. Kavanna, based in Wigan, has made more than 350 shirts since starting her business at the beginning of 2025.

Joy Nzau, a 20-year-old from east London, began making these shirts three years ago as a hobby for her sister's leaving day. Now she designs custom pieces inspired by brands like Asda, Nando's, and Greggs, posting videos of her hand-painted work to social media where they rack up millions of views. She was initially surprised by how much traction the trend gained—"literally just a shirt," she thought—but she's come to see something deeper in it. The shirts are a way for young people to express themselves at a moment when secondary school culture often demands conformity. "Everyone wants to be the same in secondary school and this is different," she said. "People are more okay with being who they are at the end of term."

For the students themselves, the shirts represent something more than merchandise. Aarushi, a 15-year-old GCSE student from Warwickshire, is planning a Guardians of the Galaxy themed design. She's been trawling Pinterest for inspiration in her spare time, treating the project as a welcome break from exam revision. She sees the shirt as a chance to show people "a new version of yourself." The process itself has become social—she's planning to invite friends over to design together, turning it into an event. She acknowledges there's pressure to get the design right, to choose something that will matter on the last day of secondary school, but she's also excited about what the shirts will reveal. "I can't wait to see other people's designs at school," she said. "You can spot similar personalities with similar shirts and that could spark new friendships."

This is a marked departure from how previous generations marked the end of secondary school. Facebook group chats filled with nostalgia reveal older traditions: signing shoes, hoodies, jeans, yearbooks. One former student recalled having everyone sign her jeans, much to her mother's dismay. The shirts are more durable, more deliberate, more permanent. They're keepsakes designed to be kept, not worn out and discarded. Joy Nzau speaks to this directly: "The shirt is a physical memory, a reminder of fun with all your feelings and nostalgia." It's something you can hold onto, something that captures not just the moment but the person you were.

The trend has also sparked conversations about self-expression and individuality. Some people on TikTok worried that unusual designs might invite judgment from other students, but creators like Nzau hope the opposite will happen—that the visibility of so many different designs will actually encourage people to be themselves. She's seeing anime designs, Spotify artist shirts, all kinds of personal touches that would have felt risky in the middle of secondary school. By the time leavers' day arrives, though, the stakes feel lower. The school year is ending. The friendships that matter will survive the summer. The shirts become a way to say: this is who I am, and I'm not afraid to show it.

For the entrepreneurs building businesses around this trend, the work is intense but rewarding. Sydney Evans described the summer season as chaotic and exhausting, but there's satisfaction in being part of something that matters to young people. The demand grows every year. The designs get more elaborate. What started as a niche hobby has become a genuine cultural moment—a shift in how British teenagers mark the passage from secondary school to whatever comes next. The shirts are the visible proof that something has changed in youth culture, that there's more room now for being different, for being yourself, right at the moment when you're supposed to be leaving it all behind.