More Substitutions

After my shirt story from a couple of weeks ago (and no, I did not for a second consider saying "shirt tale," you weirdos), I realized that I'd recently had another similar experience. You want to see how obsessed I can get about clothes? Read on...

A few months back I came across a guys' style blog out of Vancouver called On The Daily (which has since changed its name to Inventory Updates). Their tastes run to a lot of obscure, very expensive Japanese labels influenced by classic American workwear that are typically available only in Japan, but they're also into a lot of basic, classic made-in-America stuff like Filson coats and Red Wing boots that I could appreciate.

Reading through some of the older posts, I learned that they had a web store, and they'd had some cool oxford cloth shirts made just for them in a collaboration with Pennsylvania shirtmaker Gitman Bros. The shirts were available in white, gray, and red. When I saw the red one I flipped out. I'd been looking for an oxford cloth shirt in this exact color for a long time, but I'd kind of given up, figuring that no one was bothering to make anything like it. The gray oxford was pretty nice-looking too. I don't wear a lot of solid color shirts (I tend toward stripes and plaids), but these were very nicely done and I could see wearing them with a tweed vest, of which I have a couple.

The shirts had been produced in very limited quantities and had gone on sale months before I'd discovered their site, so of course they were sold out. Even if they'd had any left, they were $150, which is an awful lot of money to even consider spending on a shirt. I was also a bit wary of how the shirt might fit, since it seemed like they were cut on the slim side. Near the end of August I saw a post saying the red shirt was back in stock, but when I clicked over to their store it had already sold out again (it looked like I'd missed it by about an hour). The same thing happened a few days later with the gray shirt. I figured this was a message from the universe that I was better off not having to face the temptation.

Then the Mrs. and I went to New York near the end of September, and made our now-customary trip to Uniqlo in Soho, eager to check out their fall offerings (our previous visits to the store had been in early spring and summer months). They stock dress shirts year-round, but I was more interested in what they might have in the way of long-sleeved casual shirts. I came across oxford cloth shirts that were made of a much heavier fabric than a typical oxford, but were also very soft. They had them in white, blue, pink, and what do you know, gray:

I already have a pink one and didn't want a blue one, so I got the gray and a white one, since I didn't have one and they were only $19.50 each. (Yes, you read that right. That's one of the reasons I love Uniqlo so much. A similar shirt would be $40 or $45 at the Gap and would never be of such a nice, substantial fabric.) I left the store happy, and hoping Uniqlo would add additional colors down the road, maybe some stripes.

A few weeks later I was still thinking about the red oxford, but I hadn't seen anything comparable except for a shirt at J. Crew that was more of a brick red that wasn't doing anything for me. One Sunday the Mrs. said she wanted to go to Kohl's and I went along. Kohl's is a store I don't bother with much, but I have bought the occasional pair of jeans or khakis there, so I typically do a quick once-around and then go see what the Mrs is looking at.

Kohl's carries a lot of clothing by Chaps, which was a low-end brand started by Ralph Lauren back in the 1970s before Polo got big. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that it still has a connection to RL, but they unloaded it years ago and probably wish it never existed. The clothes are inexpensive and look it, generally made of poly/cotton blends and not of particularly good quality, but they usually have one slightly nicer collection of all-cotton items each season, and I have a plaid Chaps shirt (that I got at Kohl's a couple of years ago) that works fine for the office, so I stopped for a look.

All of a sudden I see... a red oxford cloth shirt. I thought I must have been seeing it wrong from a distance, but when I got close to it I saw that's indeed what it was. They wanted around $30 for it, which just wasn't worth it to me. But for kicks, I looked on eBay when I got home and found someone selling one, in my size, new with tags, for $15, so I bought it.

(Just as a point of reference, that's 10% of the cost of the one from the Canadian guys, and while that shirt had some nice little details and I know that it's of much better quality, I would just feel way too guilty spending that much on one shirt.)

There's only one problem: the shirts from Chaps that are 100% cotton usually have an ugly embroidered logo, and as you all know by now, I can't stand logos.

But I figure that if I wear it under a vest or sweater, no one's going to know. At some point, though, I'm probably going to want to wear it on its own. I may try removing the embroidery, but I know that can end up leaving holes in the fabric. If I want to venture into really obsessive territory, I can wait until the end of the season and pick up another of the shirts on clearance, and have the Mrs. use it to make me a new, plain pocket. She rolled her eyes at this and shook her head in exasperation, but she also likes a challenge, and she admitted she could do it.