I was in the prime of my turbo-packing era when I finally made a bone-headed mistake. Turbo-packing, for the uninitiated, is the act of packing hastily and haphazardly at an hour irresponsibly close to the moment when you are meant to leave for the airport, often without properly folding your clothes, sometimes without even making sure that they are clean.
It’s usually done when traveling to a familiar place where all the small comforts of the world are already waiting for you. It does not matter if you forget this or that. Turbo-packing is an act of abandoning all caution and leaning into ease.
In this case, I was visiting my grandparents. And what I forgot was T-shirts.
Yes, I forgot to pack an entire category of clothing.
Not long after my arrival, I bought an emergency T-shirt from a local frozen custard shop to get me through the trip. I could throw it in with the nightly wash cycle and alternate with the shirt I’d worn on the plane. It would be fine, I told myself.
One does not look at a faded, pale red T-shirt purchased for roughly $15 from a strip mall in Wisconsin and think, “This is possibly the greatest T-shirt known to man.” The thought is inconceivable, bordering on the absurd. In fact, your immediate assumption is more likely that this will probably be the worst shirt ever.
But the moment I put it on, all disillusion was shed away, and I was struck, momentarily, by the feeling of a lush, almost buttery cotton draped over my shoulders.
I looked at the tag and saw that the shirt was manufactured by a brand called Comfort Colors—a popular choice among screen printers for its thick and soft fabric, relaxed fit, and sturdy construction. With a cursory Google search, I discovered that blank versions of the exact shirt I had purchased—Comfort Colors model number 1717—were available on Amazon in a veritable armada of colors for around $10 each.
I bought a dozen.
Staff pick
These short sleeve T-shirts have a slightly relaxed fit, are available up to size 4XL, and come in more than 30 colors.
As someone who has spent a frankly embarrassing number of hours tugging at fabrics, inspecting seams, and learning from relatives who worked in textiles, I was impressed by how premium this shirt felt, especially for the price.
The fact that scratchy Hanes and Gildan T-shirts with see-through fabric can be purchased for roughly the same $10 made me feel like I was getting away with something. (Though we haven’t directly compared the Comfort Colors tees with our picks for the best white tees for men, we did indeed dismiss an option from Gildan and other similarly priced shirts for being sheer and thin, among other quality issues.)
Good clothes should not be this easy to purchase or this affordable. This was the T-shirt heist of the century.
The price feels almost liberating; the times I’ve been foolish enough to invest in expensive T-shirts from cool brands like Lady White Co. or Merz B. Schwanen (which are about $100), I have been hesitant to wear them liberally (or I end up spilling iced coffee on them within the hour). Comfort Colors shirts have that slight glint of luxury with their relaxed fit and hefty fabric, but part of their charm is their cheapness. It allows you to wear it without reservation. A replacement is but a click away.
