In search of the perfect T-shirt

It's a been a travel-and presentation-intensive month for the NWL, with a mountain of makeup work waiting when it was all over. Along the way, I did my biannual wardrobe shift, packing up the fall/winter duds and pulling out the spring/summer clothing. I realized while doing this that I am short on tops; many of the T-shirts I bought three years ago are looking really worn and faded. In my world, that means fine for home and bed, but not for work. T-shirts have been part of my slow fashion strategy since the 70s, when I first started including solid T's as a wardrobe staple -- always one white, one red and one black, which coordinate best with my professional wardrobe -- and a couple "fresh" colors to keep things interesting. This year, only the black on and one other was looking presentable enough for work, meetings and other "dressy" (for me) occasions.

So I started looking for replacements, hoping to apply some of the newer eco-fashion principles to the search. I shopped Greenloop but gagged at the outrageous prices (can I harvest my own bamboo and send it to them for fabrication?) and the proliferation of tops designed but the young and slim. (No cap sleeves, please!). The usual catalogs have arrived, full of T's in a lovely assortment of colors, but none of them in organic cotton or made in the U.S. I visited American Apparel downtown and liked some of what I saw, but their "fine jersey" strikes this over-educated consumer as lovely to look at and wear, but less durable than the heftier cotton I usually buy.

An aside -- this is the problem with cotton jersey T-shirts. Cotton IS absorbent and it holds up well to repeated washing. But T-shirt wearers have probably noticed how their favorite shirts (and jeans, for that mattter) get thinner, more faded and softer over time. That's why we love them so much and also why they need to be replaced more often than some other items in our wardrobe. Unless the fiber used is fairly long (for cotton, that means 2-2.5 inches), fibers tend to wash away over time. Flat jersey knits are also less durable than pique or rib knits. So the perfect T for durability would be made of long-staple fiber (Pima, Supima, Egyptian)  in a slightly heavier, textured knit fabric. I have noticed that my T's with a touch of Spandex seem to be holding their shape a color well, also.

So far I've made one purchase --  a stripe (heather blue and white) Liz Claiborne shirt in a medium-weight, tiny rib. Value Village, $1.95. They had scads of cotton T's, but they all looked like the ones I'll be sleeping in this summer.