Five of the Same Shirt
“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.” Thoreau, Walden
As the years tick by, your priorities change. Buying a shirt used to mean “which band” or “which obscure tech reference.” Now it means “does it feel good, look good, and will it last?”
Enter the perfect t-shirt: the Patagonia Men’s Work Pocket T-Shirt, in black. I own five as of writing this, and I’ll probably round the collection out to ten. I own a couple of other colours too. They look dorky.
Day one. Photo: Patagonia.
I never thought I’d be writing on the internet about the quality of a t-shirt, and I don’t work in textiles. If that’s any indicator of how exciting this blog is going to be, you know by now whether you’re staying or leaving. Anyway.
It feels like something. Slipping one on, even a well-worn one, feels incredible. It has weight. Literally: it’s a 6.6 oz hemp and cotton blend, where the average tee is under five. You feel like you’re wearing a garment, as opposed to some polyester mess that shrinks and clings to you the moment you step into faint light. Next to a run-of-the-mill tee this thing is a Kevlar vest. It has depth, it has strength, and it doesn’t stretch like a plastic bag when you pull on it.
It costs money. Around $55 a shirt, which is steep. I only buy them at 40% off, and given they’ll last about thirty years, that works out to roughly nothing. It also helps that Patagonia is one of the few companies I don’t feel bad giving it to, as opposed to landfill-maxxing.
I do wonder if a day will come when I decide that buying ten of the same shirt was a mistake. Maybe. Diogenes saw a boy drink from his hands and threw away his cup. I saw a sale and bought a fifth shirt. But the alternative was another fifteen years of standing in front of a drawer thinking about it, and I’ve already spent enough of my life doing that.
My oldest one is about three years in now. It’s been through more washes than I’d care to count and the black has gone half a shade toward charcoal. It still feels great to wear.
Three years, most of them in the wash.