Does Anyone Really Need a Made-to-Measure T-shirt?
On a fiercely hot day in the summer of 2022, in the dog days of the pandemic, I had my bum sized up by a man who was wearing a protective visor (and who can blame him?) at a boutique on Chiltern Street, the Marylebone menswear mecca.
This was strictly in the name of research, for a piece in the Financial Times (where else?) about (what else?) made-to-measure underpants.
Working closely with the shop-assistant- slash-private-tailor — by which I mean sitting near him — I selected from a Gatsbyesque array of fabrics and finishes, the most luxurious of which was a pair of boxers in a cashmere blend, to be monogrammed with my initials. Please forgive yet another unedifying image, but when the finished product arrived at my home some weeks later, wrapped in fine tissue paper, I put them on, and then instantly took them off. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be the sort of man who would have his initials stitched into his grundies. I believe I have, over the years, been able to maintain an appropriate sense of my own essential absurdity — even under extreme provocations such as this. But it is necessary to keep a watchful eye on one’s vanity. Made-to-measure underpants were an indulgence, and an imposture, too far. (As a side note, I don’t — yet — need my pants to remind me of my name. And anyone else who sees me in my pants already knows who I am, worse luck.)
Not to say they weren’t very nice pants. Oh! These were the cat’s pyjamas of cashmere boxers. But, to put it bluntly, unless one were in some way seriously misshapen, or really quite spectacularly blessed/cursed, why on earth would a man need his pants made to measure?
“Why do you need made-to-measure anything?” The man in the visor had answered my question with a question of his own. “It delivers a better product.”
I’m not sure about that. If you can afford one, a bespoke suit — more elaborate and involved than made to measure — can be a beautiful thing indeed. The process of selecting cloths and patterns and colours and buttons and pockets and vents, and then deciding on a cut and myriad further details, is fun — and spoiling. But again, unless one is particularly tall, or short, or fat, or thin, or otherwise unusually put together (misplaced limb, that sort of thing), off-the-peg suits do the job admirably, for the most part. And you can always have them tailored if you drop a few pounds or, more likely, put them on.
All this flashed through my head the other day when I was invited, in my capacity as editor of Britain’s best-dressed magazine, to help celebrate the opening of a splendid new Sunspel shop, on Jermyn Street in London, by having a T-shirt made to measure.
Sunspel, founded in Nottingham in 1860, has a proud heritage of quality and innovation in underwear and, lately, outerwear, too. It is famous for, among other things, its T-shirts,
made from Sea Island cotton: simultaneously flattering, hard-wearing and supremely comfortable — so much so that a few years ago in Esquire, my colleague Charlie Teasdale named them the best in the world.
I was led into the basement of the shop, where the company’s long and storied history is chronicled, and the tailoring was done by a very accommodating Frenchwoman. I selected the fabric (mid-weight cotton), sleeve length — longish, as I’m no Jeremy Allen White in the biceps department — collar and colour (navy). Typically, I fluctuate between a size M and an L, depending on lunch. This time I was to be a size Me.
I don’t usually go in for pocket tees — a bit infra dig — but on this occasion I threw caution to the wind. (Rock’n’roll, no?) And the monogram, since it was obvious they really wanted me to get one, was also in navy, and on the hem, where I wouldn’t have to look at it.
Two weeks later, my T-shirt arrived in a box wrapped with a pretty bow, which included
a card telling me it had been handmade in Long Eaton, the Derbyshire town to which Sunspel moved in 1937, by an employee called Christine.
I am already a Sunspel fan. I own shirts and T-shirts and pants. I have a Sunspel car coat for rainy days. A few years ago, Esquire collaborated with Sunspel on a version of its Riviera polo shirt — the one Daniel Craig wears in Casino Royale — and a Loopback sweat- shirt. (Idiotically, I neglected to pinch either of those.) But don’t take it from us: the unfailingly dapper Charlie Watts, late beat-keeper for The Rolling Stones, was a Sunspel T-shirt man. So is Cillian Murphy.
So I needed no convincing of the virtues of this noble British label. But I must say, the made-to-measure T-shirt is a cut above. It fits the way a T-shirt should, neither too baggy nor too tight. It is neither too heavy nor too light. The Charlies (Teasdale and Watts) might be right: it could be the perfect T-shirt. I’m glad I opted for the pocket, too; sometimes the inessential things are the ones you love the most.
So, I’m a convert. From now on, I shall pity anyone wearing a T-shirt that hasn’t been handmade for them, to their specifications, preferably by Christine in Long Eaton.
You mean to tell me you buy your own T-shirts off the peg? Dear, dear! It simply won’t do. ○
Sunspel, 23 Jermyn Street, London SW1; sunspel.com
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