The Ineffable Platonic Ideal of the Shirt
What do you wear in this present, noisy world? It took me a year to find the breath to make new knits. Clothes are our public signifier of how we exist among others. And the others seem to ever startle, exert, shout, push, sell, influence, force, follow, like, swipe, judge, criticize, shrug.
I wanted to make clothes that could allow me, and maybe you, to simply be.
The new Hathaway "Soft-Wrap-Shirt" is such. It is named after David Ogilvy's Man in the Hathaway Shirt. The form of the collared dress shirt is both great and unobstrusive, and it is my obsession to perfect it over the years. It is always appropriate across place and time. So with my fully fashioned knitting machines, I knit the collared shirt. The blessing is knit wrinkles less than cloth.
Those of you familiar with my previous knit shirts, the Eliot (2019) and the Giselle (2020), will recognize the Eliot's luxe superfine merino, and the Giselle's longer, puddling cuffs. I've updated them into the Hathaway with a pointed collar, a roomier width, and side-seam buttons for more ways to wear. Tightly knit collars, wide cuffs, and plackets assert quietly, and are not limp or weak like other knit shirts or polos.
The 2 extra hidden buttons and buttonholes along the side seam lets you wear the shirt "wrapped" and "twisted" asymmetrically. For the choice of more fits and play, if you wished. Lengthwise, the Hathaway is cut a tad shorter than the dress shirt to not need fussing and tucking. Widthwise, it cuts wide to softly drape away from the body with ease. Very soft yet granular superfine 140's merino wool drapes supple on the skin. Lastly, they can be washed with your regular laundry. Drape it onto the back of your chair to dry.
Altogether, here is clothing appropriate and okay across places and time, poetic and rational, to exist with all of what come may.
So, the Hathaway is.
A Calvin Klein ad in Wallpaper* Magazine 1997