T-Shirt Fashion

Unintentionally, I have found myself building a collection of printed t-shirts, one or two of which I wear almost daily these days. I’d like to say this is due in part to the pandemic, and the fact that I work from home. The truth is, I worked mostly from home before the pandemic, and was building said t-shirt collection even then.

I really began to notice this after our trip to Florida during our kids’ spring break in 2021. Whenever we visit Florida, we head to an outlet mall a few miles from my mother-in-law’s house and I do some clothes shopping. Last spring, I bought myself a handful of new shorts, and four printed t-shirts at the Gap outlet. Those t-shirts, bright, colorful, occasionally with amusing slogans, formed the core of my collection. I wore them frequently. They are soft and comfortable. The collection has continued to grow.

While in Cooperstown, New York over the summer, I bought myself a printed t-shirt for the National Baseball Hall of Fame museum. Over time I acquired two Field Notes t-shirts to replace the one that had faded after a few years of wear and tear. By the fall I was almost always wearing a printed t-shirt, and only rarely could be spotted in some other kind of shirt.

Back in Florida for our holiday vacation, I once again returned to the Gap outlet. I was in the market for some jeans, it being winter in Virginia, and bought myself 3 new pair (which I haven’t yet had a chance to wear because I’m still in Florida and the weather is warm and sunny). It was my intention to buy winter shirts to go along with the jeans, but I came away with more printed t-shirts. There was a Mickey Mouse shirt, a “take it easy” shirt, and another shirt which I can’t recall at the moment.

For Christmas, I received more printed t-shirts including one featuring the Red Pony bar from the Longmire books, as well as a classic Star Wars t-shirt.

I have started to chose my shirts carefully each day in an attempt to match whatever might be relevant for activities at hand. Already I plan to wear the Mickey Mouse t-shirt for our first day at Magic Kingdom, and the Star Wars shirt on our first day at Hollywood Studios.

I plan on continuing to accrue these t-shirts so that I can build a library of shirts to match moods or occasions. I call it my t-shirt fashion.

In case you are wondering, the shirt I am wearing as I write this (more than a week ahead of your reading it) is one of the new ones I received for Christmas: a dark blue shirt with the image of a glass filled with ice cubes and some liquid and the legend: I’M KINDA OLD FASHIONED.