After I finished my PhD I went back to an office job, with a boss who required smart clothes (no jeans) from his developers. After a little trial and error I worked out a ‘uniform’: smart trousers, white shirt, and whatever waistcoat or jumper I liked. Everything went with everything, so it didn’t matter what I picked out in the morning. I built up a small collection of white shirts and all was good.
The places I’ve worked since have been a lot more casual. But I stuck with the uniform, other than switching back to jeans. I swapped out some of the initial white shirt purchases for some better quality ones. But there’s been one shirt I bought very early on, on extreme end-of-line sale from Lands End, that I just haven’t managed to replace. It’s got a ‘band’ collar with a little bit of a ruffle, and it just feels like it suits me.
It was really cheap though. Maybe a year or so ago I realised the cuffs were already starting to fray, and started looking for a replacement. I found something sort of close, but it’s a floatier, lighter material. Not the same, and I kept reaching for the old shirt. I tried a bit of embroidery, just a little decorative blanket stitch along the frayed edge. That worked ok, but embroidery thread is not great for resisting abrasion. And then I noticed the sleeve was starting to fray where it joined the cuff too. Desperate times!
So I figured I had nothing to lose, and I might as well try replacing the cuffs. I found some fabric I loved online (it’s quilting fabric, not sure it’s shirt quality, but whatever), and used the old cuffs as a pattern base.
I shuffled the cuffs up the arm about half a cm. That covered the patches on the sleeves that were getting threadbare, and they are still plenty long enough. The other thing I changed was that I added a little curve to the cuff corners. The previous cuffs were rectangular, and I noticed I kept getting a little irritated by the pointed corners getting flicked and curled on my wrist rest as I typed. The curves were honestly not the easiest to stich (probably my lack of practice) but they really do feel a lot better to wear. Worth the extra hassle. I have since noticed that it’s my best shirts that have the curved cuffs, so something to watch out for.
How long the rest of the shirt will last? Who knows. But this wasn’t too difficult a fix, and now I have a very unique shirt! Although I have broken the uniform thing for remote work, so maybe now I don’t actually need to replace it when it wears out…
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