Blue Shirts

Every men's wardrobe sees changes. One kind of thing loses popularity, and another surges. Take for example, my current infatuation with light blue shirts, which seem to be most of what I wear during the day currently. I wear them with brown, I wear them with tan, and I wear them with blue. Rarely gray though. I don't like the combination of gray and blue nearly so much as I like gray and tan, or gray and maroon, or gray and pink. Even gray and white, but I was writing about blue.

I was wearing just about anything in the way of shirts except blue until this past year, and when I did wear blue it was usually white collared and cuffed. One day I was thinking that those white collar shirts were a bit too flash for the occasion, and when I looked for a plain blue I could not find one.

Blue shirts come in every variety under the sun of course, from linen and voile for summer, chambray and end on end for year-round wear, and oxford and twill for winter just to name a few. I like them best with neckties that have navy grounds, and those are probably all a man needs in his wardrobe anyway beyond a black knit and a black grenadine to wear with the aforementioned gray jackets. But though I had plenty of navy neckties, I had let my blue shirts wear out.

That shortage of blue is remedied now, and I have enough non-flashy versions to wear with the flashier of my suits. A man needs at least half a dozen if he sends his shirts out, and ten or twelve is a better number if he also travels as weeklong trips can mean three weeks pass before he sees a shirt that he has sent to be laundered. Or when, as happened to me, the better half tells the laundry service not to ring the bell in the morning and effectively stops them from picking up for a couple of weeks.

At any rate, I am in the midst of my obsession with blue, as illustrated by the blue chambray in the photo. A few hours later the same shirt and a different necktie accompanied a blue blazer to cocktails. For I am currently infatuated with blue.