I’ve got a rather perfunctory relationship with T-shirts. I shrug a shirt over them, I drag a sweatshirt over them, yet I rarely consider them garments to wear as an outer layer. This is perhaps due to the 11 months of piss-bleak weather UK-ists endure each year. It’s probably also due to my weirdly antiquated instinct that a round-neck on its own looks too casual. But I also reckon it’s due to the lack of seriously interesting T-shirts. I’m not the kind of clothsman to flex turbo streetwear branding and I’m not witless enough to scurry after Vetements-esque fashion ‘moments’… So where does that leave me? Glad you fucking asked…

It leaves me looking at this Japanese denim linen T-shirt. As with much of the kit I scribble on, it comes loaded with unnecessariness. Unnecessariness that just happens to be profoundly necessary. Clock those side zippers. Not only do they exist in the first place – sufficient for most activewear-leaning menswear – but they’re emboldened in gold and decorated with blazing red ribbon. What the actual fuck? But the audacity doesn’t stop there. There’s crossover stiching below the neck, press stud fastening on the shoulder, a white stitched on badge on the front and a red tab on the back – this T-shirt is packing.

It’s by Thoroughly Denim by Itten and you can grab it over at Digital Mountain, if that’s the sort of thing you do. To some, it’ll be a bit too heavily laden on the details front. For me, it’s just so impossibly not the kind of stuff UK stores sell that it warrants a purchase. Silly bits of ribbon or otherwise.