Durable cotton t-shirts to pair with leather jackets

[Rich22]

That’s cool, we’re all entitled to different opinions. I strongly dislike the appearance of turtleneck jumpers, but that’s probably got to do with hating anything touching my throat.

 

[Rich22]

It seems that a regular t-shirt under a leather jacket is the de facto norm now...

Google “perfecto” and in 10 pages of results only one person is wearing anything but a t-shirt under their leather jacket.

Google “men’s leather jacket” and in 10 pages of results, again, only one solitary bloke is wearing anything but a t-shirt.

 

[navetsea]

Sure it is only my personal opinion, but i almost never googled "men's leather jacket" because in my area maybe but it will result in very poor looking usual aliexpress leather and pleather jackets worn too small by models. To my neck size i always need chunky thing to fill up

 

[Bushman]

It seems that a regular t-shirt under a leather jacket is the de facto norm now...

Google “perfecto” and in 10 pages of results only one person is wearing anything but a t-shirt under their leather jacket.

Google “men’s leather jacket” and in 10 pages of results, again, only one solitary bloke is wearing anything but a t-shirt.

I blame Marlon Brando and the greaser crowd for making it look just so damn good...

Like many people, I am likewise influenced by what the stars wear and how they wear it. I'm partial to the open Hawaiian shirt with white Tee underneath from the way Ben Affleck wore it in Pearl Harbor...

 

[Rich22]

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t knocking your opinion. I’m just used to seeing people predominantly wearing t-shirts under leather jackets, and googled it to see if I was imagining things or not. And you should use a VPN

 

[zebedee]

@Superfluous, thank you for your answer. It IS good not to have to wear suits to work everyday! Hats off to all white collar professionals successful enough to be able to choose when they wear a suit!
I wear made to measure because of the impossibility of getting an off the peg suit that fits here, and whilst they are not cheap, and I can enjoy wearing them every now and again, I never really get excited about wearing suits and enjoy it like I do flight jackets.

I guess the t-shirt thing to me is like highend leather jackets were 25 years ago; if someone told me about it back then, I'd have been incredulous, but now I get it. OTOH, it could be like selvedge denim, which I don't really get, preferring modern Levi's.

@zebedee, I wear long sleeved linen shirts in summer too. I feel like I look like a child in shorts AND a short sleeves shirt, but a casual linen shirt with long sleeves cuffs turned up twice, is a better look for me.
I have short sleeved button up linen shirts, with oversized prints of hula girls on them, and only wear them *ironically* (i.e. when I'm at a party with alcohol).

Getting older generally means wearing everything ironically.

 

[Edward]

@Edward, that's interesting because I've always felt that WWII RAF and Luftwaffe pilots were real 'knights of the air', proper gentlemen, and that their leather flight jackets looked pretty good over dress shirts and ties.
On the other hand, I feel that despite being originally designed to be worn as such, all the US flight jackets look much better without ties, more casual shirts and (at their best) over a white cotton T-shirt. That's the power of 'Hollywood' right there in shaping perceptions of class and culture.

Completely. Captain Virgil Hilts has a lot for which to answer - despite being fictional!

That could be an interesting topic or side conversation. Or maybe we're already having it? What does a particular piece of clothing mean to you? For instance, I already said a T-shirt is utilitarian, but I should have also added that it means comfort to me. When I want to feel comfortable (during half the months), I put on a T-shirt. I don't necessarily view them as sloppy or for slopping around town, either. Utility. Comfort. Minimalism. But I have family members who feel comfortable in dress shirts, khakis, and penny loafers. They wouldn't be comfortable in a T-shirt, even at home watching a baseball game on their couch. Their leisure clothes are a different set than mine.

And then this all changes with the situation. When I take walks at night during the summer months, I like a thin linen short-sleeved dress shirt with two pockets. Utility and comfort. Outside of that situation, I feel short-sleeved dress shirts are a hideous piece of clothing...an embarrassingly ugly piece of clothing, and I don't even get embarrassed. They're awful. That's all. But I still find a situation to prefer them.

T-shirts for me are almost entirely underwear now. I think it's a decade or more since I last wore one as outerwear in its own right. I wear them year round, but only as undershirts (interspersed with 'A' shirts; I buy both largely indiscriminately and depending on what is in stock at my supplier). I would pick up more telnyashkas, though unless intended for underwear, sized so that an undershirt can be worn beneath them. I like striped T shirts and the likes of Brando's ringer T. Would wear any with a logo of any sort now.

Yes! I hate athletic gear because of this. Logos EVERYWHERE.

One of only many reasons I hate athletic gear. It's a huge curse on everything nowadays, though - even a lot of motorcycle gear is covered in logos. Nothing can ruin an otherwise great design quite like having a logo slapped on it. (Ironically, I enjoy seeing patched and decorated mc jackets, but that's something different again, I think.)

I can also remember that rare Toyota truck owner who would remove all the emblems and giant TOYOTA stickers from the tailgate. Logos aren't just free advertising, but they're obviously a status thing. Sold as some sort of achievement in life. I don't want any of it. Like you, I don't think about what others are thinking about my clothing (or anything, really). It's all for my satisfaction.

BMW at a time offered a 'minimal logos' option on their higher end models - just the BMW badge, nothing else. Cost something like an extra £800 as the boot lid had to be special ordered - the drilling of the holes for all the badges was a standard part of the manufacturing process. A lot of more understated folks preferred them de-logoed - high performance logos can attract undue attention, not least from the police. The opposite of the young guys that used to buy base model Mark III Ford Escorts and badsge them up as RS Turbos and XR3is.....

Not even tiny logos on the left hand side of the chest? I actually *slightly* prefer that to completely plain t-shirts, for two reasons; It looks to me like something is missing if it's absent, and secondly, it invokes the look of own-brand $2 crap in many people's eyes. (rightly or wrongly)

Conversely I would never wear a dress shirt with any visible logo.

I tend to associate a lack of logoing with high end stuff as well. Interestingly, I've always found in practice that whereas unlogoed stuff improves significantly in quality with price, as a rule, when it comes to logo'ed t shirts, there's a wide price band indeed in which the quality of the basic shirt itself improves not a jot - only the logo / brand gets more expensive.

 

[nick123]

One reason why a tee is often worn under a leather jacket: tees are usually shorter than other shirts; they pair better with shorter jackets for the untucker!

 

[Seb Lucas]

Correct, Nick. The other thing about wearing a t-shirt - it helps immeasurably if you are in shape and the t-shirt fits properly. If you have a veranda over the tool-shed, a t-shirt is never going to look great.

 

[Rich22]

In the interest of, ahem, *science*, I purchased 3 supina t-shirts from Uniqlo yesterday. They were on sale and I was curious. I hadn't bought a t-shirt in 2019- mainly because of the issues of a being a fairly large foreigner in China. Uniqlo's XL provided a nice trim fit without being clingy. I tried on some other similarly priced t-shirts yesterday (national sale day for some reason), and I have to say that stuff from H&M is horrendous- misshapen crap, simply. From Uniqlo I got a striped t, a black t and an unusual but nice purple/pink t. Was going to get a white but the fabric is as thin as I'd ever buy, and when I can see my own chest hair showing through it's too sheer. Hopefully they don't lose their shape after one wash, and remain as super-soft as they are now. If they don't, they can live their life as winter undershirts.

 

[Big J]

@Edward, IIRC Hilts never actually wears a white T under his A-2, but yeah, his image has left an indelible air of casualness to the A-2.
There was a phase maybe 8 years ago (?) of everyone in Japan wearing those blue and white horizontal striped t-shirts. And whilst the style is popular with the Russian and PLA(N) and therefore originals are plentiful, it's use by Soviet Paratroopers and Spetsnaz during the Afghan War always made me feel I should pass on it just because of my age. It's kind of like why I won't wear a flight jacket with modern era patches on it.

As for logos, they drive me insane. I accept that sneaker manufacturers can't help it, and there's no choice, but with t-shirts there always is.
And then there's polo shirts. The trend of the last 10(?) years or so (I blame RL) for polos with a logo, and a national flag, and a number, on the front and on the back, in some color with a white color (or any of the above in combination or alone), drives me insane. Polo shirts can be a good smarter alternative to t-shirts for casual wear, but it's all just become a bit 'gimmicky'. Why do people insist on handing over their money for the dubious 'privilege' of being able to advertise the name of the company that made the clothes?

When products are so lacking in distinctive features that you need to have the name written on it to know who made it, then maybe it's a product that doesn't really matter.
After all, I bought my TV, I know who made it, why the hell do I have to look at the plastic logo on the front of it? Just in case I want to rush out and buy another but my dementia is kicking in?

 

[navetsea]

do you guys want superman without logo as well

 

[Seb Lucas]

do you guys want superman without logo as well

Yep.

 

[navetsea]

but then you'll get confused with papa smurf

of all the written brand on electronics, SONY is the one I tolerate the most, and then the one I hate the most is SAMSUNG, what a stupid long name and the sounds also stupid, takes a long time for me to stomach it to have it on my phone.

 

[Big J]

Yep! I feel like I already bought your damn product, why have you got to force your logo down my theist in my living room? What more damn loyalty do they expect? All appliances with matching logos? WTF!

 

[GHT]

If you have a veranda over the tool-shed, a t-shirt is never going to look great.

I'm going to steal that. In fact, I might even get it printed on a T-shirt.

 

[Edward]

@Edward, IIRC Hilts never actually wears a white T under his A-2, but yeah, his image has left an indelible air of casualness to the A-2.

I'm sure I caught a glimpse of a white undershirt's collar under his top in one scene, but yes, throughout the whole thing he wears a blue sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, unhemmed, at the elbows under the A2. That and sixties khakis and boots (totally wrong period for the film and jacket but they match the sixties haircut I'm sure I read he refused to change for the period the film is set in...). e of my age. It's kind of like why I won't wear a flight jacket with modern era patches on it.

When products are so lacking in distinctive features that you need to have the name written on it to know who made it, then maybe it's a product that doesn't really matter.
After all, I bought my TV, I know who made it, why the hell do I have to look at the plastic logo on the front of it? Just in case I want to rush out and buy another but my dementia is kicking in?

With the TV, I guess the idea is that your visitors will see it? The original concept behind trade marks (and trade mark law) is that they provide an indication of the origin of the goods as a guarantor of quality. These days, since the eighties at least, really, it seems that the brand has become the valuable thing in and of itself. Sometimes, I guess, people get swept up in that. Then there will always be those who are insecure about their own choices, and need the 'approval' of an acceptable brand. Those are the people who will pay through the nose for a very ordinary t-shirt with a 'designer logo'. It does seem there is often (but not always) a new money / old money divide on consumption patterns here.

What I also hate seeing are amusing t-shirts ruined by big logos. Like a shirt which says "Bazinga!" on it - amusing reference for those who get it, totally ruined by a big 'Big Bang Theory' logo on it. Who wants to buy into a niche reference like that but them immediately ruin half the joke by referencing it that way?

do you guys want superman without logo as well

I'd opt for no Superman at all, myself.

 

[John Lukich]

I bought some Lady White white t-shirts ($99 for 2). I'll update when they arrive. Doesn't seem like many in here are open to persuasion, but I'll say that I just threw out a 6 pack of Fruit of the Looms because after a bunch of washes they became less comfortable, not more. I'll pay close attention to how these feel after breaking in.

 

[SimonR]

I bought some Lady White white t-shirts ($99 for 2). I'll update when they arrive. Doesn't seem like many in here are open to persuasion, but I'll say that I just threw out a 6 pack of Fruit of the Looms because after a bunch of washes they became less comfortable, not more. I'll pay close attention to how these feel after breaking in.

Be interested to hear ..... I don't rate Fruit of the Loom anymore ... used to be OK a decade ago

 

[navetsea]

Yep! I feel like I already bought your damn product, why have you got to force your logo down my theist in my living room? What more damn loyalty do they expect? All appliances with matching logos? WTF!

useful to figure out which remote control works with what