The phrase “crop top” was not in Laken Brooks’s vocabulary before March 2020. Months of working from home at the start of the pandemic, though, gave the 27-year-old Ph.D. candidate a chance to re-evaluate her fashion choices.

So when the chance to own a cropped T-shirt — short sleeved and charcoal gray with images of wildflowers on the chest — presented itself, she took it. While for many people, style has been, at best, a secondary concern during the pandemic, some, like Ms. Brooks, found their personal style.