The Best V-Neck Money Can Buy
Pima V-Neck
When it comes to comfortable tee shirts, it’s been a long goal of mine to find the perfect shirt that will keep it’s color, texture, and size for as long as I own it. Of course, this is in conjunction with the owner taking equally as good care of it, without going overboard like paying per shirt to dry clean or something ridiculous. In this article we’ll talk about my favorite shirt, and how I take care of it without costing any more money compared to your current cleaning routine.
The Shirt
My favorite of all time
The shirt in question is the Lacoste Pima V-Neck. From my personal preference, the v-neck shirt is perfect for me because I have a rather thick neck (neck size 18, it’s hard to find a dress shirt without getting it tailored) and the v-neck keeps the shirt from feeling like a noose. I’m not sure if this is a common problem, but I’m guessing not because crew neck shirts seem to sell at a much greater volume.
The material is made from pima cotton, which is a thinner weave and to my best knowledge - a finer thread. The sizes come in European sizes which are pretty much 1:1 to American sizes, with a size 3 being small, 4 being medium, and 5 being large - and so forth. The cut of the shirt fits well (size 5) around my shoulders without the waist of the shirt being fit for a person who has a 40” waist size. It’s almost like a “slim” shirt but without the designation.
The weave of the thread for most European shirts are slightly different than most shirts - where most shirts will shrink vertically, the Lacoste Pima V-Neck shrinks horizontally. Keep this in mind when determining your size when you try them on at your local Lacoste retailer. Perhaps this is the reason why the shirts fit well.
Caring for the Garment
For the average user, most people will split their colors, whites, undergarments, towels, and sheets and wash them separately while using the appropriate wash setting. Most of today’s entry level washers will have a setting for delicate clothes, jeans, towels, etc… After that, the users will toss the clothes into the dryer and use the appropriate settings for that load of laundry. Short of deciding what load your socks go into, it is a pretty easy process to do your laundry. Or is it?
When I first acquired my Lacoste shirts, I would just simply wash them in the delicate cycle, and hang dry them, mainly because I know that the regular dry cycle uses a lot of heat to evaporate the moisture, but also causing the fibers to burn and shrink. What i had noticed after the wash is that there was some sort of a residue left on the shirt - and would turn white upon touching or scratching the surface. What I found out was that the liquid detergent that I used left a slight residue It didn’t matter what type of detergent I used - I tried changing brands, to powders, and even to pods without any real difference (powder is by far the worst).
This led me to make sure that I hand-rinsed each shirt to get the residue off. The water leftover after the rinse clearly let me know that the there was residue as the water clearly had “stuff” left in it. I didn’t feel like drying the shirts with the residue left in it was a good idea either way - which may apply to your regular laundry, but that’s for another topic day.
As for the drying, I take the freshly rinsed shirts, and put them in the dryer at “dewrinkle” setting which does not raise the temperature of the cycle too high. Once the shirts are a nice damp-dry, I simply put them on hangers and put them in the closet to dry. The hang-dry method might not work in all climates, however - Arizona’s climate is extremely dry so you can pretty much hang-dry anywhere in the house.
Purchase
The main source for purchasing these would be at the Lacoste shop online or visit your local retailer, the MSRP is $49.50. There are sales up to 40% off throughout the year so check often or join their mailing list on the website. Most mid-high end department stores will carry the shirts as well - in store and if not definitely on line. I recently purchased my shirts from Macy’s online store as American Express is currently giving (as of writing this article) an additional Member Rewards points for each $1 spent. Macy’s online also had a 25% sale that applied on top of the select styles already on sale. Nordstrom and Dillard’s also sells these shirts as well as Amazon - so it should not be too difficult to find your color and size at a reasonable price.
Final Thoughts
I hope that this article has helped you in deciding a shirt for you and maybe even taught a thing about keeping your favorite shirts in pristine condition. Let me know in the comments if you have tried it or have any questions about the Lacoste Pima V-Neck.
