So Jessica walked into our bedroom last Tuesday and found white t-shirts hanging from literally every surface – the closet rod, door handles, that exercise bike we never use but can’t bring ourselves to sell. She just stood there for a minute, then asked in that special tone wives use when they’re questioning their life choices: “Wayne, why does our bedroom look like a Hanes factory exploded?”
Fair question, honestly. See, what started as a simple “hey, can you find a decent white tee under fifty bucks” request from my buddy Mike turned into what I can only describe as an obsession that would make my middle schoolers proud. You know how kids get fixated on something completely random? Well, apparently that doesn’t go away when you hit thirty-four and have a mortgage.
Three months later, I’d tested forty-two different white t-shirts from twenty-seven brands, spent way more money than I should’ve on what’s basically the most boring piece of clothing imaginable, and learned more about cotton construction than any reasonable person needs to know. My UPS driver started making jokes about my “shirt addiction,” which… okay, maybe he had a point.
But here’s the thing about white t-shirts – everybody thinks they know what makes a good one, and everybody’s wrong about something. My dad’s still buying those six-packs from Walmart he’s been loyal to since I was in elementary school. My neighbor Greg swears by some $45 “premium basics” brand that sounds like it was named by a startup founder who definitely has strong opinions about oat milk. The guys at school mostly wear whatever their wives buy them, which is probably the smart approach but doesn’t help when you’re trying to figure out what actually works.
I mean, how hard could it be, right? It’s a white shirt with short sleeves. Cotton fabric, some stitching, boom – t-shirt. Except apparently there’s this whole universe of variables I’d never considered. Fabric weight (who knew that was a thing?), collar construction, stitches per inch, pre-shrinking processes, cotton staple length… I started taking notes in a spreadsheet that got so complicated Excel would sometimes just give up and freeze.
Jessica found the spreadsheet around week two. “You have categories for ‘nipple visibility’ and ‘collar flop factor,'” she said, scrolling through my increasingly detailed data. “This is not normal behavior, Wayne.”
She wasn’t wrong, but I was in too deep to quit. Plus, I’d already spent like three hundred bucks on shirts by that point, so stopping would’ve meant admitting I’d wasted money we definitely don’t have to spare on a teacher’s salary.
The washing tests were where things got really brutal. You haven’t experienced true disappointment until you’ve watched a twenty-eight dollar “premium cotton blend” emerge from one trip through the washing machine looking like it got in a fight with the agitator and lost. Badly. One shirt I won’t name (but their logo is a little polo player) somehow transformed from a normal medium into what I can only describe as a crop top for someone with a beer gut. Not exactly the look I was going for.
I developed this whole testing protocol that probably would’ve impressed my old college lab partners. Each shirt got worn for a full day – teaching seventh graders about the periodic table, dealing with parent emails, the usual Tuesday chaos. Then washed according to whatever instructions were on the tag, dried, and worn again. Five complete cycles minimum. The ones that survived got promoted to advanced testing.
My friend Dave came over during week four and just stared at the chaos. “Dude, it’s a white t-shirt. Just buy whatever’s on sale at Target and move on with your life.”
But see, that’s exactly the problem with most advice about basics. Everyone treats them like they don’t matter because they’re simple, then wonders why their cheap shirts look terrible after a month. A good white tee is like a good pair of jeans or decent boots – you wear it constantly, so the quality actually matters more than something you only break out for special occasions.
The delivery situation got weird around month two. Our regular UPS guy, this older dude named Frank, started giving me concerned looks. “More shirts?” he’d ask, like he was staging an intervention. I tried explaining about the testing process, but that just made him look more worried. “Okay then,” he’d say, backing away slowly. “You have a good day now.”
My students definitely noticed something was up. Seventh graders are weirdly observant about stuff like that. “Mr. Johnson, why do you keep wearing the same white shirt?” one kid asked. Explaining that they were actually forty-two different white shirts seemed like it would raise more questions than it answered, so I just said I was “exploring options.” They accepted this with the kind of eye-roll that middle schoolers have perfected.
The most surprising discovery? Price means absolutely nothing. Some of the most expensive options in my test – we’re talking forty-plus dollars for a basic cotton tee – fell apart faster than stuff I grabbed from Target’s clearance rack. One particularly disappointing example from a brand that spends way too much on Instagram ads started pilling after exactly two washes. Two! I’ve had free race t-shirts that held up better.
The sweet spot seems to be somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five dollars. Cheap enough that you’re not paying for marketing and fancy packaging, expensive enough that they’re using decent materials and construction. Below fifteen bucks and you’re usually getting tissue paper that’ll disintegrate or shrink into doll clothes. Above thirty-five and you’re mostly paying for someone’s lifestyle brand fantasy.
Fabric weight turned out to be huge. Too light – anything under five ounces per square yard – and you might as well be wearing plastic wrap. I spent one particularly awful day in a shirt so thin you could literally see my undershirt through it. Jessica asked if I was trying out for some kind of see-through fashion trend. Not the feedback you want from your wife.
Too heavy, though, and you’ve basically got a sweatshirt pretending to be a t-shirt. There’s this perfect zone around six ounces where it hangs right, feels substantial but not bulky, and actually looks like proper clothing instead of shapewear or winter gear.
The collar situation became my biggest obsession. Nothing – and I mean nothing – ruins a t-shirt faster than a collar that goes wonky. Wavy edges, weird curling, that thing where it starts flipping up like you’re auditioning for Grease… it’s all terrible. I developed this test where I’d hang each shirt on a hook for twenty-four hours after washing to see how the collar held its shape. The failures were honestly depressing.
One shirt that shall remain nameless (but rhymes with “Shmold Savy”) emerged from this test looking like it had developed some kind of fabric-based neurological disorder. The collar was doing things that defied physics. I actually took pictures to document it, which probably wasn’t helping my case with Jessica that this was normal research behavior.
By the end of month two, I’d narrowed it down to ten contenders. My coworkers had stopped asking about my “t-shirt project” because my responses had gotten increasingly detailed and possibly unhinged. “Well, the cotton staple length affects durability, and you have to consider the knit structure…” Their eyes would glaze over about fifteen seconds in.
The final testing phase got pretty intense. I tried tucking them into dress pants (some bunched weirdly, others stayed put perfectly). Wore them under button-downs to see which ones added bulk. Even did an accidental coffee spill test when I knocked over my morning caffeine – surprisingly revealing about fabric treatments and stain resistance.
Jessica participated in one blind comparison where I made her rate the final five options without knowing which was which. “This feels like the kind of thing crazy people do,” she said, dutifully examining each shirt. “But this one’s definitely the best.” She picked the same one I’d been leaning toward, which either validated my methodology or confirmed we’re both losing it together.
After all this ridiculous testing, the winner was actually kind of anticlimactic. Los Angeles Apparel’s Standard Cotton Crew, twenty-four dollars. Not some cool direct-to-consumer brand with minimal packaging and a backstory about the founder’s journey to perfect basics. Just a really well-made shirt that does exactly what it should do without any fuss.
The fabric hits that perfect six-ounce weight. Substantial enough to look like proper clothing, light enough to layer under stuff. The collar keeps its shape through multiple wash cycles – I’m talking five complete wash-and-wear tests, and it still looks basically new. The fit works for my teacher-body (not exactly athletic, but not completely gone to seed yet) without being too tight or too boxy.
Most importantly, it just keeps being a good shirt. After washing it constantly for testing, it still looks white (not greyish like some of the others), still fits the same way, still hangs properly. Sometimes the best products are the boring ones that just work.
Second place went to Uniqlo’s Supima Cotton option at twenty bucks. Slightly thinner fabric, but really solid construction and a bit more fitted if that’s your thing. Third place was Everlane’s basic tee, also twenty-four dollars, but it runs longer which didn’t work as well for my proportions.
The funny part? After identifying the winner, I immediately ordered eight more. My credit card company called to ask if my account had been compromised. “No rational person needs nine identical white t-shirts,” the customer service rep explained, like she was talking me off a ledge.
“They’re really good shirts,” I said weakly.
“Uh-huh,” she replied, clearly filing this under “weird but harmless.”
Now my t-shirt drawer is perfectly organized with nine identical white tees, and honestly? No regrets. Sometimes you have to go completely overboard to figure out what actually works. My students get a teacher who looks put-together, Jessica gets a husband who’s not constantly complaining about his shirts falling apart, and I get to wear something that just works without thinking about it.
The delivery guy Frank seems relieved that the shirt packages have stopped arriving. “Find what you were looking for?” he asked last week.
“Yeah,” I told him. “Finally.”
“Good,” he said. “That was getting weird.”
Fair enough, Frank. Fair enough.
Wayne’s an Ohio teacher who built his wardrobe on a real salary, not a runway one. He shares smart, down-to-earth advice for dressing well on a budget—proof that good style doesn’t need a big paycheck, just good choices.
