A white collared shirt is canonically onerous to seek out. I’ve been wanting since eliminating a Brooks Brothers boys’ gown 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 needed 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 favored it, however one thing concerning the double patch pockets on the chest irked me — it felt like an excessive amount of occurring. It took me about half-hour to choose 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 difficult to differentiate between thread and the garment’s fibers, that are normally the identical colour. Ensure you’re grabbing solely thread with the instrument’s level — if you happen to rip textile fibers, it might probably depart a gap.) I’ve a couple of 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.
Photograph: Writer
Minus the patch pockets and hem, the shirt is ideal. It seems minimalist and structured, cropped however not too cropped, sitting simply across the high of the hip bone. I put on it with all the pieces, from nylon health club shorts to swooping silk swimsuit pants, and it by no means seems 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 want the texture and sturdiness of pure fibers, and poly-cotton blends could be vulnerable 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 by. (And I not too long ago wore my Dickies skateboarder pants to maneuver residences, so that they’ve been scraped, stretched, used to brace the corners of heavy wood furnishings, and so forth.) It additionally takes edits properly (as skate boarders know): The twill weave is dense sufficient that it frays with out unraveling, so you may depart your lower sleeves and undone hems uncooked they usually’ll be high-quality with the occasional trim for free threads. The shirt is hard-wearing and stain-resistant sufficient that I don’t must deal with it as preciously as my different white button-downs, which implies I get extra put on out of it.
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