Our favorite cropped T-shirt right now comes from Abercrombie & Fitch. With vintage details like reversed seams and a lived-in faded wash, it feels like a shirt you would hope to find in a well-curated vintage store. The fabric itself is double-hefty and has a beautifully structured drape while maintaining a soft hand. And the boxy fit, roomy sleeves, and hip-grazing length are in a golden ratio all their own. Now all you have left to do is choose your favorite color.
GQ contributor (and noted cropped-tee enthusiast) Jake Woolf put us onto Abercrombie’s version, and he touts its dense, premium heavyweight cotton and range of colors, each of which looks perfect with the brand’s shockingly affordable line-up of jeans, cargos, and pleated trousers.
Best Running T-Shirt: Bandit Drift Performance Tee
Sizes: XS-XL | Fabric: 100% Polyester | Weight: Lightweight | Fit: Classic | Neckline: Classic crewneck
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not much of a runner. But when I asked the most dedicated hoofers in the GQ office (chief among ‘em associate commerce editor Tyler Chin, deputy site editor Chris Cohen, and our prodigiously-thigh’d senior web producer Gabe Conte) about their go-to running tees, Bandit dominated the conversation. All three of them recommended the buzzy Brooklyn brand’s T-shirts, which promise next-gen performance wizardry housed in the type of gear you’d be proud to rep running errands, too.
Bandit’s long-sleeve micromesh joint took home top honors in this year’s Fitness Awards, but the short-sleeve Drift tee is a perennial bestseller. According to the unofficial GQ Running braintrust I consulted, that’s no accident. It’s almost impossibly lightweight and laughably breathable thanks to a sophisticated jacquard knit that prevents chafing and wicks away sweat, the two most common enemies of the PR you’re chasing on the track.
Best Merino Wool T-Shirt: Proof 72-Hour Merino T-Shirt
Sizes: XS-3XL | Fabric: 87% merino wool, 13% nylon | Weight: Lightweight | Fit: Classic, slim | Neckline: Loose crewneck
Not all T-shirts are made of cotton. And no, I’m not talking about the cheaper tri-blend kinds that fuse synthetic materials together to form a gym-worthy tee that eschews sweat and cools the body like a walk-in fridge. There’s a class of tees out there that use all-natural wool to do everything those athletic tees do, without the chemicals. A wool tee sounds like a crazy proposition, but hear me out.
Wool has plenty of properties that make it a prime candidate for performance wear like natural microbe-resistance which means less odors, moisture-wicking properties, and temperature regulation for keeping warm in winter and cool in the summer. They’re pricier than the synthetic stuff, for sure, but if you’re leaning toward more natural options to toss in your gym bag, I’d recommend Proof’s every time.
How to Style a T-Shirt
Back in Brando’s day, of course, the T-shirt was largely considered an undergarment at best, and an emblem of ne’er-do-well rebel style at worst. These days, a good tee can still protect your starchy button-ups from pit stains, but the vast majority of reasonable folks wouldn’t think twice about wearing one on its own. What we’re trying to say is that no matter who you are—a budding menswear enthusiast with an empty closet, an expert-level dresser with too many grails to count—or what you’re doing—lounging around the house, powering through a one-rep max—T-shirts aren’t just basics: they’re essentials. (Einstein had to master his multiplication tables before he could solve for “E”, right?)
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