I don’t like to shop, especially for clothes, although I’m trying to get better at it lest I end up that guy unironically wearing his Members Only jacket. I’m still searching for that mythical store that will allow me to pick up all I need to dress nicely for work—pants, shirts and ties—in one swoop but I haven’t found one that meets my demands for competitive pricing and crisp styling.
I think I’ve solved the shirt portion of the puzzle, though. I must give credit to the folks at the Japanese1 chain Uniqlo, which has planted its sprawling U.S. flagship store on Broadway near Prince Street, and whose shirts I’ve come to appreciate for their trim European-style tailoring and colorful yet relatively conservative styles.
Since it opened here in late 2005, Uniqlo has been compared to The Gap, and they do carry unfussy styles and just “the basics,” but their tailoring is much nicer and their quality finer than The Gap, with a price hovering somewhere between the merchandise of that chain and Banana Republic. Plus, their small fits me more or less perfectly, where the sleeves of that size anywhere else would be too short. A few weeks back I bought a few Uniqlo “fine wrinkle-free” long-sleeved button-down dress shirts to see how they’d fare under multiple wearings and washings, and I was pleased they returned from the laundromat pucker-free, unshrunken and not faded. Best, I can confirm they are indeed wrinkle-free. I’ve already been back to purchase a few more. Yay, Uniqlo!
1 Although as with many other apparel merchants, most of their stuff is made in China. [back]