A white collared shirt is canonically laborious to search out. I’ve been wanting since eliminating a Brooks Brothers boys’ costume shirt final October (good cloth; by no means match fairly proper) with little success — as a five-foot-tall one that wears largely males’s clothes, I might by no means discover one thing my measurement that wasn’t hourglass-shaped and/or diaphanous. I wished boxy, sturdy, not too fussy with a collar that felt remotely proportional to my physique and face. My search led me to Dickies work shirts, which I practically eradicated — the smallest males’s measurement was too huge, and the ladies’s shirt has that nipped waist that I can’t stand. Then I discovered the model’s $35 cropped model, which mixes the boxiness of the lads’s mannequin however the narrower shoulders and smaller collar of the ladies’s sample. On a whim, I purchased it.
When the shirt got here, I preferred it, however one thing in regards to the double patch pockets on the chest irked me — it felt like an excessive amount of occurring. It took me about half-hour to select them off with my seam ripper; the crop was a bit excessive for me, so it took one other ten to unpick the shirt’s hem and steam it flat, which added about an additional inch of size. (A tip for utilizing a seam ripper: It may be tough to tell apart between thread and the garment’s fibers, that are often the identical shade. Be sure to’re grabbing solely thread with the software’s level — in case you rip textile fibers, it may possibly go away a gap.) I’ve just a few seam rippers, however the one I attain for most frequently is made by the stitching model Clover. There’s a small ring of ergonomic rubber round the place my thumb rests, so it doesn’t slip round in my hand whereas I’m digging out stitches.
Picture: Writer
Minus the patch pockets and hem, the shirt is ideal. It appears minimalist and structured, cropped however not too cropped, sitting simply across the prime of the hip bone. I put on it with every thing, from nylon gymnasium shorts to swooping silk go well with pants, and it by no means appears misplaced. It’s the uncommon collared shirt that by no means makes you appear overdressed, however even with the uncooked hem, it doesn’t skew zhlubby.
I credit score that to the shirt’s development from a medium-weight cotton-polyester mix, the identical cloth as the lads’s model. I’m usually a skeptic of materials with that composition — I choose the texture and sturdiness of pure fibers, and poly-cotton blends may be liable to sagging or pilling as they put on in. However I’ve by no means had that drawback with Dickies cloth, it doesn’t matter what I put it via. (And I just lately wore my Dickies skateboarder pants to maneuver residences, in order that they’ve been scraped, stretched, used to brace the corners of heavy picket furnishings, and many others.) It additionally takes edits nicely (as skate boarders know): The twill weave is dense sufficient that it frays with out unraveling, so you may go away your minimize sleeves and undone hems uncooked they usually’ll be positive with the occasional trim for unfastened threads. The shirt is hard-wearing and stain-resistant sufficient that I don’t should deal with it as preciously as my different white button-downs, which suggests I get extra put on out of it.
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