The dreaded mushroom

As I age, and am no longer the sloppy youth that once I was, I have become more conscious of how my clothes look. Stop laughing. I’m serious. To that end I put more thought into the clothes I buy, and even more specifically, into how my clothes fit. My latest frustration on this front has to do with dress shirts, and the dreaded mushroom effect.

You may be asking yourself, just what is this mushroom effect you speak of? What I’m talking about is the way a shirt gradually untucks itself from bending over, sitting down, and just generally moving around. As it untucks it billows out over the top of your pants like cloth love handles, making you look like you’re wearing your father’s too-large shirt. Now keep in mind that the shirt won’t untuck itself fully: they’re too long for that. But that’s the same reason you really can’t wear a real dress shirt untucked: you look like you’re wearing a smock.

The answer to this ages-old dilemma is to get your shirts tailored so that they fit properly, which is a step further than most men are willing to go. So what alternatives exist?

Increasingly there are “slim fit” and “fitted” shirts available, which helps. Slim fit shirts are generally cut closer to the body and with smaller arm-holes and narrower sleeves, though still straight through the body. Fitted shirts are tapered through the body to hug closer to the ribs and waist. If you have just the right body shape and measurements (I don’t) this may be all you’ll need.

Another alternative, relatively ill known to the general public, but common amongst military men, is shirt stays. The oldest form of stays consists of four elastic bands with clips at each end. The idea is that you clip the bottom of the stays to your socks and the top to your shirt hem before putting on your trousers. Two of these per leg, front and back, to fairly well at keeping your shirt tucked in. The danger is in a clip coming undone and waging war upon your, um, “soldiers”. They can also feel really restrictive and rub your leg hair off. A later generation of stays consists of an elastic stirrup that loops around the bottom of your foot and then goes up the outside of your leg (rather than the front and back), before splitting in two to clip onto your shirt hem. These are supposed to be more comfortable and less likely to injure if they come unclipped. The final version of a shirt stay is a punctured, rubber belt that you wear around your hip sand below the waistline of your pants, thus constricting your shirt in place. Yes, it is just as comfortable as it sounds.

The final option is a variation on the proper solution. Instead of getting your shirts custom tailored from scratch you may be able to buy inexpensive shirts and then have them re-tailored. This relies on finding a local tailor you can work with, and one who will hopefully not charge you an arm and a leg to do the work. Before you go out and buy shirts to take to your local tailor talk to them first and find out what they think they can do, and what they’ll charge for the work.

I haven’t yet decided what the right path for me is going to be. I’ve worn a stay belt before and don’t like it, so I’ve decided to try a pair of the stirrup stays and see how they work. If that isn’t a great success then I think I’ll end up Yelp looking for inexpensive tailors in my area.