My 10 Favorite White T-Shirts to Buy Right Now
Plus a long winded take on why I need to reset my mind from sneakers, streetwear, and hype cycle things in general + other stuff in this week's Haute Garbaggio!
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The Return of Heritage Workwear and Passing the Lessons of Quality Wears Down to the New Generation of Jawnz Enthusiasts
I was having a conversation with a fellow Highly Influential™ TikTok guy this week (we were at a coffee shop in Los Feliz on a Wednesday afternoon doing LA things), and after a while I realized that there are so many things in the style world I take for granted. See, when I first got into the jawnz game in earnest around 2008 (when I was a junior in high school, FWIW), I dove head first into a world where fabrication, fit, and the minutia of certain rivets on jeans are what separated those in-the-know from the masses. Terms like selvedge, single-stitched, and shuttle looms became a part of my world, but since then, I—and the menswear world writ large—basically have not given a fuck.
That’s with good reason: as high fashion and streetwear permeated the #menswear world, things like the history of Margiela, copping sneakers, or weighing in on the latest collection from Paris’s biggest names, became the new frontier. Geeking out over different mills in Japan no longer seemed fascinating, especially as the aesthetic was adopted by every mall brand in America, then sold back to the masses minus the stuff that made it fun—or worth the $—in the first place. As capitalism does, heritage workwear became reduced to an aesthetic—a bastardization of the movement’s intent to imbue dudes with a sense of buy less, but buy better—a phrase that does not work long term for corporate America or their shareholders. (I can just imagine some American Eagle exec sitting in a meeting in 2012 being all, “Okay so it’s about showing the products are quality, but we can just change the washes to be darker and no no, we won’t need to change anything about how the clothes are actually made, don’t be ridiculous.”)
All of this is to say that as I’ve introduced myself to a new generation of shopper, I realize that a lot of the stuff I now take for granted as common knowledge really, um, isn’t. There was a time when I didn’t know shit about shit either, which has re-inspired me to dig into some of the Workwear 1.0 look in an effort to kick off the cobwebs as I begin to attempt to educate newly minted jawnz enthusiasts on the basics.
What this also has done has in earnest reminded me of how much fun investigating things like the differences between something as simple as white T-shirts are. I’m not here to say that heritage menswear is capital-B Back in full…all I’m saying is that after years of twisting my brain in knots following the ebbs and flow of capital-F fashion, a back-to-basics approach feels like god damn mental spa.
This re-dive into selvedge and such has also reminded me that when clothes are actually made well and with quality fabrics, they deserve to be at least relatively expensive.
We live in a world where the most common comments on my TikTok are from people who are angry that any piece of clothing would ever cost more than $50. In my humble opinion, no piece of clothing probably should be less than $50 if it were to be made sustainably and with the people who put it together earning an honest, living wage.
I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t have the budget to flex on designer goods in any way shape of form, so don’t get it twisted. There are larger economic factors at play that have to do with wealth inequality and the slow (or maybe fast) destruction of the American middle class that have been reflected in how people shop. Either you’re someone who’s got the dough to drop $700 on a Balenciaga tee, or you’re someone who can only afford Uniqlo. The middle ground, where most of the independent labels who are truly dedicated to craftsmanship, sustainability, and living wages live, exist in a no man’s land where they don’t inspire on cost nor big flexing. Even a mass brand like J.Crew, who sells jeans for like $100, feels a little hung out to dry for not offering $30 jeans.
I think at the root of a lot of this cynicism about clothing pricing stems from people’s general distrust of the ultra-rich, who always seem to be getting over on the rest of us one way or another. I feel that deeply. But without a nuanced understanding of the difference between a $70 Mister Freedom T-shirt and a $500 Gucci one (and there are a fair amount of differences), the only option for many is to lash out as they lump all of the option above $10 together.
I am by no means being sanctimonious about any of this. I literally just bought a $30 pair of JW Anderson x Uniqlo bootcut jeans. They’re coming to my house next week and I’ll let you know what’s up. But if I really think about it…how the hell is Uniqlo turning a profit on this? Who got fucked over along the way? Just the workers in the factory? Or was it also the folks who had to sell Uniqlo cotton for pennies on the dollar? Was it basically everyone?
It sounds obvious, but the only real answer to combat fast-fashion is to once again say: buy less stuff that lasts longer. The fast-fashion industry preys on people’s desire for instant validation, ie, I saw celebrity X wearing this jacket and thus I NEED it for $20, in fact you OWE it to me, as well as their desire to daily flex on the gram. (Wear it once, fit pic it, toss it, rinse and repeat.)
Thus the education of what makes certain products quality is something I hope will not just be helpful to those looking to consume, but those trying to avoid doing it all the fucking time.
Anyway, here are the T-shirts…and yeah, some of them are really inexpensive (I can’t solve all of the world’s problems today!), but most of them are T-shirts I think are actually worth their weight.
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