Shirt Tales

I am very rarely a shirt wearer. Shirts make me feel hemmed in, like I am suffering a slow death by strangulation. You could build a prison entirely from a white shirt. In fact, they have: it’s called a straight jacket. Yep, I am here to officially debunk the myth that it is essential to own a classic white shirt.

This shirt by She’s Beck I am wearing, with its widely spaced beige pinstripes, is the closest thing I have that would qualify. It has a giant concertina pleat in place of a shoulder seam, ruched sleeves, and waistcoat-style front closure. Altogether it encapsulates a witty take on the harried office-worker. Therefore, not your typical white shirt, and it just passes muster on these grounds. Yet it’s still a shirt, and I can seldom bring myself to wear it.

You could build a prison entirely from a white shirt. In fact, they have: it’s called a straight jacket.

Shirts also smack too much of offices and accountants and busy little worker ants scuttling around on their repetitive and tedious tasks in strict time to the telephone. Not to mention school. And who wants to be reminded of that when you’re dressing up to go out?

The white shirt connotes regimentation; uniformity; rigidity. I don’t care if Audrey wore one stylishly* (as one blogger rhapsodised). That hackneyed phrase ‘the classic white shirt’ just makes me yawn.

Spread your wings: how fab is this shredded white shirt that isn’t a shirt? It’s by Stacey J. Lee.

Fortunately for me, my chosen career path has not lead me to employment with companies with restrictive dress codes – the kind where you are also obliged to wear beige pantyhose at the height of summer, and only natural shades of hair colour are permitted. (Not that I want to dye my hair pink, but I might one day. So it’s just nice to know I have that option.)

I have therefore always pooh-poohed fashion editors’ pushing the essential, classic, perfect white shirt. And I don’t at all subscribe to that slight sense of guilt one feels reading those prescriptive lists of all the ‘classic’ items we should harbour in our wardrobe, but don’t.

Cool unclassic white shirts from Palmer//Harding. These are really blouses: see, no collar!

While we’re on the subject, I don’t much like classic white t-shirts either – mainly because I utterly loathe and despise crew necks for the same reason I dislike shirts: I feel like I am slowly being throttled. Plus, they make me look like a pinhead. On the other hand, blouses are fine – because they don’t have collars. They are usually soft and unstructured and make me feel languorous rather than hot and bothered and wanting to smack someone out of Shirt Rage.

I’ve managed to muddle through life quite nicely thank you – shirtless, and lived to tell the (shirt) tale.

* In Roman Holiday