Never ending search for the perfect white tee...
/I Finally Found My Perfect White T-Shirt
10.10.17
The best white T-shirt in the whole wide world is “the Crew” by Hanes x Karla.
I know this title has been debated, tested and awarded before, but this is the Real It. I first saw it on my friend Gabby Katz, a tee-picky fashion publicist with a big chest — two important details because I, too, am a tee snob, with ample-enough sized boobs depending on my cycle or who you ask. Her shirt was everything I wanted it to be: fitted but not in a lame way, plenty of room at the sleeves (I hate tight short sleeves), a good high-neck (“good” meaning the less trite form of perfect, harder to argue because it’s less objective), the right length (right above a low hip, easy to tuck into a high waist), 100% cotton in that structured-but-not-stiff weight. The holy grail.
“I wanted a shirt that I saw on all the heroines in movies from Grace Kelly to Winona Ryder,” says celebrity stylist Karla Welch on the website for her seven-piece Hanes collaboration, which Justin Bieber also had a voice in, which I find hilarious. A Grace Kelly/Winona Ryder/Justin Bieber aesthetic is the look I am always going for, so I bought five. Then I couldn’t stop wearing it, panicked about the inevitable ruining of it and now can’t stop wondering if I should actually own 10.
In my 29th year of age, I have resolved to get rid of the things that don’t serve me: hole-y socks, jeans I hate, the entire drawer’s worth of tees that make me feel gross. I have sworn an oath to “get over” the whole “I wore the same thing yesterday” complex, and I have promised to accept that the outfit that generally makes me feel best is the plain vanilla “jeans and a tee.” This shirt — the one I have deemed as the ultimate best — is my first big step toward this goal. Imagine a world where I open up my drawer, reach my hand in for the perfect tee and don’t have to dig? That could be my reality. Each paycheck I could buy a few in bulk, like I once did to revamp my underwear drawer.
Still unclear if this is excessive or practical. All I know is that I love it so much I want to hug it, but I guess wearing it feels just as intimate.
