White Shirts

"Ask any guy what he has the most of, and the odds are he’ll tell you, ‘Socks, underwear and white shirts," says NPD’s Marshal Cohen in a New York Times piece by David Colman (1/13/11). "It takes no brains and no style to make a white shirt look good — as long as it’s clean and it fits," says Marshal. Given that, it may come as some surprise that few retailers have capitalized on white shirts, particularly when it comes to "the little-discussed realm of retail known as … ‘replacement shopping’."

The idea is "to perfect basic garments expressly so that the time-crunched or shopaphobic guy can whiz in and out of a store as if on a jet-fueled sortie, halting only briefly behind enemy lines to grab three/six/nine of his tried-and-true chinos/briefs/socks. In, out, nobody gets hurt." The concept is frequently applied to t-shirts, jeans and khakis, but somehow white shirts have been left behind (maybe because of competition from "more casual-looking light blue shirts").

Thom Browne, a designer, thinks that’s selling white shirts short. "It’s the only shirt that guys should wear," he says. "It’s always appropriate, and there’s something easy about it that makes it look perfect." But he says it shouldn’t be too fussy: "I’m not a big fan of really refined dress shirts," says Thom. "It’s too much." He recommends white shirts made of oxford cloth, "which is rougher and less dressy looking than broadcloth." His sell for $195 each. "This you can wear with something fancy, and it helps tone it down a bit," he says. Hm. How much for a t-shirt?