The basic white tee shirt. You know how to wear one, do you know how to buy one?
As an Actors’ Studio graduate Marlon Brando learned to use his body to show his character’s inner turmoil, in A Streetcar Named Desire he uses a white tee shirt to thinly veil not only his ripped physique but also his character’s bestial urges.
James Dean picked up the beat to iconic effect and the white tee became a symbol of the first generation of teenagers to dress differently from their parents.
60 years on and the June edition of GQ features Vince Vaughan in a darker and career re-defining role in the new series of True Detective. Among the denim and the linen he is of course styled wearing a white tee – darkness and deep brooding masculinity duly noted.
Originally issued as regulation underwear for the US Navy in 1913 the white tee shirt has become an enduring source of comfort and easy style for men ever since, an unpretentious wardrobe staple which reveals as much or as little as the man wearing it decides.
There’s more to the white tee shirt though than looking solid as a rock against denim – the thing about a white tee is it tells a good story. It tells any story you like, the white tee is both unique and everyman, fresh and rugged and above all intimate – perhaps due to its roots as underwear or being one of the first things you might leave at a lover’s apartment.
But whereas some tee shirts stay with you for years and become a part of your life others look done in after a couple of washes – is it all down to price? Not according to David Moore of
Headen & Quarmby in Manchester where our boxer shorts are made “You can buy a big name brand tee shirt and still end up with spirality which is where side seams twist after a couple of washes, it’s down to knits being cut slightly off-grain by manufacturers cutting out too many garments from too little fabric to save money.”
Here’s How to Buy a Tee Shirt You’ll Wear For Years.
Fit
Close but not tight, there shouldn’t be extra fabric around the body and it should be long enough to layer without bagging out at the bottom.
Feel
You want organic cotton in a high thread count for a perfect ratio of soft to strong, when it feels right, it is right.
Shape Integrity
Some tee shirts are constructed on a circular knitter which can give you those twisted seams post wash. A good tee shirt keeps its shape, simple as that – it’ll soften over time but that’s what you’ll love about it.
Seams
Watch out for over-locked stitching round the seam at the base of the neck. You don’t see Don Draper scratching his neck during a killer presentation. You want the comfort of a double stitched French seam which will lie flat without an itchy edge.
Ethical Credentials
Tee shirt manufacture is a heavy water consuming and polluting process particularly for the people doing the graft. Instead, buy a tee shirt which is carbon neutral and made by people earning a fair living wage in comfortable working conditions.
The white tee shirt.
Brando made it unpredictable, Dean made it sexy now
Penny Dreadful makes it simple.
The new PD 100% organic cotton tee shirt is now available in soft grey mélange or honest to goodness white, with a not too high not too low v neck to knock some of that stiff US Navy regulation out of the frame.
