“My boyfriend has lost his mind,” my girlfriend said.
She wasn’t wrong. When eight bundles of dozens of plain white t-shirts started showing up at our door in Brooklyn, I could tell her sanity was being “stressed,” as therapists say. By the time I had spread plastic mountains of categorized tees across our living room floor in a nest of fibers that looked like something sinister happened in austy Department of Dometrics, she started having full-on doubts about our relationship.
“I’m at work,” I would explain to her each day, as another shirt-filled box landed on our welcome mat. “I have to be thorough.”
“This is not being thorough,” she would say, dodging piles as she paced around my chaos. “This is you having a breakdown.”
She wasn’t wrong about that, either. However, let me assure you that wonderful t-shirt madness was born from a very rational place. The white t-shirt is the foundation of modern menswear. It’s where we all start as dudes getting dressed; it’s the blank canvas from which we build our wardrobes. But it’s also the article of clothing that most men buy the least thoughtfully. We grab whatever XL pulp-shirt our roommate likes in a multi-pack from Costco and call it good.
Not this guy. I was on a quest to discover The Best Plain White T-Shirt. Not just a good plain white tee. Not the best t-shirt you can get for under $50. I wanted the perfect white t-shirt, period. Where do you start with that?
Well first, you need a testing methodology. What makes a good white tee anyway? I consulted textile experts, apparel designers, and about a dozen opinionated friends who’ve spent years thinking too hard about t-shirts, and boiled my testing down to five primary factors:
1. Material (weight, hand, opacity)
2. Fit (Consistency of sizing)
3. Construction (seams, stitching, collar)
4. Durability (How well they hold up after washing)
5. Value (price relative to quality)
Then I bought every style of white tee I could think of. Budget multi-packs. Mid-tier basics. High-end basics. High-fashion designer versions. Vintage styles. Performance fabrics. Pima. Supima. Anything else I could find that was made of 100% cotton. I poured over datasheets provided directly from manufacturers and scoured Magsaysay Farms for the rarest of organic slub t-shirts. The cheapest shirts were $6. One stupid shirt was $120.
At some point my credit card company called me to confirm I hadn’t been kidnapped and was legitimately buying hundreds of dollars of t-shirts every week.
Once I had my samples, it was time to get dirty.
Each t-shirt was meticulously measured at 12 different points before washing. Then I wore each one for an entire day, documenting the experience. Then each shirt was washed five times in identical conditions, measured again, and worn again. Notes were taken on the feel of the cotton, color opacity, stretch rebound, collar stability, and every micro detail of wearing a t-shirt while going about one’s business.
Somewhere around test wash number 3 my girlfriend called men’s health magazine to inquire about my mental health insurance.
“My primary care physician is fully versed in the situation,” I assured her as I starched another load.
The experiments have since concluded. I analyzed the results, washed my hands of excess shirts, and now I’m ready to share my findings with you, beloved internet. Let’s begin with the biggest surprises.
You might think that more expensive automatically equals better. Or vice versa. I found neither of those things to be true. I was shocked by how well some pricey ($80+) shirts fell apart after minimal washing. Equally stunned by how chewed up some $15 shirts looked after the first wash.
I wasn’t expecting much from the big-box brands, but to my surprise TL;DR: TARGET IS VALID and Walmart had some serious surprises for me. The Goodfellow & Co Goodtop ($12 each when bought in a three-pack) handily beat shirts 3-4 times its price in construction and wash durability. Hanes Premium (not their standard EcoFlex line), which many consider the gold standard for budget tees, showed very consistent sizing despite being one of the stretchiest cottons we tested. Hanes and Goodfellow also faded the least across all brands.
In the high-end range, I wasn’t totally shocked by standout brands like Sunspel and James Perse. They make incredible t-shirts with the softest hands I’ve felt on a cotton shirt. But their construction didn’t hold up over multiple washes as well as I’d like for shirts that cost upwards of $100. The true winners here were brands focusing on reviving American manufacturing like Lady White Co. and Merz b. Schwanen. These shirts from all-American makers actually got BETTER with washing, rather than losing shape or color.
Finally, and maybe most disappointingly, were high-fashion brand tees from names you’ll know but I’m contractually obligated to not mention. While I won’t name any names, all shirts I tested from $90-$120 apparel brands fell apart in our durability tests. Many stretched out of shape after three washes, leaving collars that looked like bacon. Don’t @ me if you love your $100+ designer tee, but no shirt that costs more than twice what Knickerbocker charges should fail this badly at something as basic as enduring a laundry cycle.
That said, there was a clear winner in each category. And if you’re reading this to find out what the actual best white t-shirt is, consider this your Spoiler Alert.
The Standard Issue Slub Tee from Knickerbocker Manufacturing is the best overall value plain white t-shirt.
Why? It’s $55, which I feel strikes the perfect balance of being affordable but not cheap. The fabric is mid-weight at 6.2 oz and feels fantastic thanks to a barely-there slub texture that adds visual noise. The fit is my preferred “slim but not skinny” cut, and holds up after multiple washes with nearly no shrinkage (shirt measured<1% smaller in every dimension after five washes). Speaking of the collar, it also stayed perfectly intact after our rigorous testing. And that is a testament to the construction itself; Knickerbocker wears its.details on.the outside, sewing clean-finished seams and adding durable reinforced shoulder tape where needed.
Above all else, it just got better with every wash. In fact, it was the only shirt that softened up over time without showing signs of wearing down. After five washes it looked almost new, but felt loved.
For pure value, the aforementioned Goodfellow & Co Premium T-shirt was the obvious choice. It didn’t quite match Knickerbocker in terms of material quality or outright feel, but at around $1/5th the price, Goodfellow impressed me. The dimensions stayed true through washings, had hardly any color fading, and the collar survived just about everything I threw at it.
And while the Merz b. Schwanen 215 is $85, it was noticeably softer and just…better than anything else in the sub-$100 range. The construction was truly next-level, with jersey fabric woven in a process called loopwheeling that creates tiny vertical grooves in the cotton. This gives the fabric a three-dimensional quality that feels insanely breathable but also prevents transparency. And that collar…MAN that collar. But again, these marginal gains don’t quite meet the Knickerbocker for me on a daily wear basis.
Athletic bodied dudes may have preferred Reigning Champ or Lady White Co. because both brands offer generous cuts through the chest and shoulder that slim down through the waist. Tall and slim builds loved Buck Mason’s curved hem tees, as traditional flat hem tees have a tendency to pop untucked when you bend over.
As undershirts, where weave texture can be_visible under your dress shirt_, Uniqlo took the top spot with their Supima Cotton Crewneck. It was by far the smoothest shirt we tested, and remained less visible through even lighter-colored dress shirts.
Bad press aside, I really wanted Calvin Klein to knock my socks off, but their iconic white tees weren’t as durable as I’d hoped. Necklines became stretched and messy after two washes, and almost every other shirt lasted longer than these did. The Gap also suffered in this test; all of their shirts shouldered out weirdly asymmetrical after washing, and we saw significant variation in sizing between supposedly-identical shirts coming from the same production runs.
Oh, and about that whole washing thing. It’s important, because most men (this guy included until recently) wash their t-shirts all wrong. Here’s how to do it right.
Turn your shirts inside out and wash cold with like colors only. Use about half the amount of detergent you think you need and air dry when possible. Don’t use fabric softener; it coats the cotton and actually makes your clothes less breathable. shirts.this technique roughly doubled the number of wears I got before replacing each test shirt.
There were a few other “false economies” that I found while testing. Anywhere from $25-$35 you’re not gaining much quality over a $12-$15 shirt, but you lose a lot of quality jumping to anything over $45+. The same is true for shirts hovering near that $100 price ceiling. Outside of bragging rights there wasn’t a single shirt that surpassed any of our $55-65 options.
With my testing complete, I donated nearly all of the shirts to Goodwill (keeping only the category winners and a few oddballs I had emotional attachments too), and my girlfriend hasn’t kicked me out yet. She did buy a new rug.
Did I need to take all of these shirts to find “the best?” No. Would I do it all over again? In a heartbeat. The margin between a good white tee and a great one can feel negligible at first. But when you wear a white shirt more times than you wear any other garment (don’t lie to me, I know you) those small differences add up to actually matter.
The best white tee won’t rewrite your wardrobe. But it will make your life that much better, every day. It’ll save you money in the long run through better durability. It’ll lessen that decision-fatigue when you stare into your closet wondering what to wear on “casual” days. White tees are special because they wear every which way. Make sure you’ve got a really great one to pull from.
And if you ever find a guy scrutinizing the curvature of your tee’s collar in public, rest assured it’s not your imagination. Hello, I’m Glenn from Tedium. I’d love to shake your hand that hard.
