My girlfriend thinks I’m crazy. No argument here. When three dozen…okay fine, eighty-seven white t-shirts showed up at my door over the course of three weeks, her sanity – or what’s left of it, as she’ll politely insist – began what therapists would classify as excessive duress.
“How many shirts?” she texted me after delivery number 33. “I have a lot,” I responded before rushing home to unpack the newest batch. “Trust me, it’ll be worth it.” “It’s starting to feel like Noah and his stupid ark,” she said when I spilled them out across the floor of our Brooklyn flat, drowning our living room floor in.isfileprocessed numberless tees.
“Why do we need that many white t-shirts?” “I’m working on a project.” Another delivery brought me to fifty-eight. “It’s for work.” “This is not work,” she replied as I started bundling them into categorized stacks.
“You’re diagnosing a disorder.” Touché.
But let me explain. As basic as they are ubiquitous, the white t-shirt is really the foundational building block of modern menswear. It’s the flour in our cooking.
The C major scale in our music. Without it, we lose our ability to communicate about clothes using any common frame of reference. It’s also the garment that most guys put the least amount of thought into buying, settling more on price or availability than any articulated set of standards.
I wanted to try something different. I wanted to put enough white t-shirts through rigorous testing to determine, once and for all, what the best plain white t-shirt actually is. And by “best” I mean not just “a good t-shirt” and not just “the best t-shirt you can get for $50.” I mean the white t-shirt that outperforms its peers in key metrics across the board, the objectively best option no matter what your budget might be.
It took dozens of shirts. It took establishing testing parameters. It took white-out, infiniteExcel tabs, and countless arguments with my girlfriend.
But after three months of research (and plenty of shirt-wearing), we have answers. Down below you’ll find my official ranking of the best white t-shirts you can buy, from targeted shopping guidance for every budget up to and including my complete shirt-based shopping system that explains how to never buy a bad t-shirt again. But first, let’s talk about how we got here, and what we learned along the way.
Before I could dive into any hands-on testing, I needed to establish some parameters. What makes a good white t-shirt? Size consistency?
Durability? Breathability? Softness?
After discussing with textile experts, clothing designers, several snobby Italian tailor friends in New York, and my girlfriend, I settled on five primary metrics by which we’d judge each contender: Fabric composition (weight, hand, opacity) Size consistency Stitching + construction quality Wash test performance Price point (value) Shopping sustainably can get overwhelming, real quick. Here’s your guide to making conscious choices that actually fit your lifestyle. Next, I needed to build out a list of contenders to actually test.
I wanted every tier of white shirt possibility included, from the kind you buy in multicategooptimized stumps shipped to my door individually in plastic packaging from brands spanning budget, premium, luxury, vintage-inspired cuts, “performance,” and high-end materials like Pima and Supima cotton. Prices ranged from $6 all the way up to $120, and my credit card company sent someone over to my house to confirm I hadn’t been kidnapped. When testing each shirt, I measured 12 different data points across the shirt before wearing it for the first time.
Then, I wore it for an entire day. Took it off. Washed it five times in identical processes, then measured those 12 data points again.
My metrics were strict. Tens of shirts entered, only one would leave… victorious. The benchmarks were wash performance (how much does the shirt hold up to five washes? ), feel (how does it feel against your skin before and after those washes), visual opacity (how translucent does it get? ), resilience (how well does the collar hold up? ), and – all-importantly – actual wearability.
How does the shirt feel when you move? How does it hang off your body? These are things that aren’t always easy to quantify, but massively important to know.
Throughout this process, my girlfriend has encouraged me to seek professional help. Same with my editor, when I asked if I could break this expense report up into four parts to avoid IRS detection. I told them both that journalism is about sacrifices.
Hearing that from someone who lives five blocks away was a new level of mortification. Now that we’ve got through the ringer of minutiae that is white-t tested (and run two entire marathons worth of miles scouring every corner of NYC to find recommended models still in stock), I give you… the rankings. Before we jump into my official rankings, I want to highlight some of the major surprises that came out of this process, because there were a lot.
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No assumptions were left unchallenged. Here are some of my key takeaways: Higher price didn’t automatically mean better quality. I expected some degree of disconnect between price and quality.
What I didn’t expect was how inconsistent that relationship was across almost every price bracket. I tested multiple shirts priced between $80-$120 that performed worse on our durability tests than options that cost ¼ of their price. Similarly, I had a tough time recommending any of the ones I found around $15-$20.
Yes, they’ll likely hold up to a good washing, but they shed dye so aggressively that they looked like third-grade art projects by shirt number three. And don’t even get me started on the luxury designer t-shirts….. Speaking of surprises, let’s start with the big kahuna: the Goodfellow & Co. premium t-shirt (.
Why does this shirt beat out options costing FOUR TIMES AS MUCH? Construction. These guys know how to put a shirt together.
From the reinforced stitching to the double-sewn collar band, there wasn’t a detail on this shirt that screamed “I’m cheaply made.” And then there’s the Hanes Premium, which wasn’t great but boasted impressive sizing consistency across the entire pack. American made is where it’s at, y’all. If you’ve got the budget for high-end staples, I cannot recommend enough sticking with brands that manufacture in the States.
From Lady White Co. to Merz b. Schwanen, American makers ruled our tests in large part thanks to their commitment to more traditional production practices. One standout detail?
How both brands’ shirts got BETTER with each wash, rather than losing their shape or softness. If you’re spending less than $20, your best bets are Goodfellow & Co. and Fruit of the Loom Men’s Performance. For the majority of you, I’m looking at you, budget will probably be the determining factor when purchasing your next white tee.
Which is why I’m so excited to tell you I genuinely loved the Goodfellow & Co. Premium T-shirt. These guys sell t-shirts at Target and Walmart, and their shirts were absolutely monster in our tests.
Better constructed than Hanes but priced nearly the same, Goodfellow’s t-shirts stood up to repeated washings with aplomb. But what about the nicest shirt? What shirt topped all of our other contenders and earned the top spot as pick of the pound?
Well folks, after all of the wearings, washings, anxiously watching laundry drip dry, and spreadsheet agony…I have an answer for you. Drum roll please… Knickerbocker’s Standard Issue Slub Tee is the best white t-shirt you can buy.
At $55, it’s solidly in the mid-range. The material is slightly slubby organic cotton at a 6.2oz weight, which feels terrific and just barely shows any texture to keep it from looking like a blank canvas. The fit is slim without being clingy, and it resisted shrinking more than any other contender (less than 2% shrinkage in any direction across five washes!).
The collar is perfectly constructed, as are pretty much every detail of this shirt, from the clean-finished interior seams to the triple-needle cuff and shoulder fortification. Honestly, the only issue I had is that it got TOO soft with each wash. And by that I mean it only got softer.
This t-shirt doesn’t lose its shape, its colour, or its integrity in the wash. It gets BETTER. TL;DR?
If you want the best overall value when it comes to plain white t-shirts, buy this fucking shirt. Hopefully reading all of this will have given you a better sense of what makes a good white t-shirt. But if you’re still wondering where your perfect fit lies, we’ve got you covered.
Below is a complete guide to shirt shopping at every price point, with exact models recommended based on my testing.
And for those of you wondering aboutbody type – athletic versus slim build, tall versus short – cheque out the details below. Best Budget (under $20) Best Mid-Range ($20 to $45) Best Luxury ($45 and up) If you enjoyed this deep dive into the world of white tees, consider checking out my full shirt shopping guide right here.
There, you’ll learn not just about the types of shirts that exist, but exactly how to identify them when you see them. No more guessing when it comes to your shirt game…. If you wear a smaller size, you’re going to prefer something a little roomier through the shoulders/chest like Reigning Champ or Lady White Co..
If you’re taller and leaner, our Curved Hem tees from Buck Mason solved the age-old problem of shirt tails constantly falling out of your trousers when you sit down. As for our analysis of undershirts specifically… Quite possibly the best pillow I’ve ever fucking slept on.
If you build a perfect white t-shirt shrine in my honour, I will come. To your house. For white t-shirts.Buy the Knickerbocker here and support my shirt cult.
