The Return of the White Shirt

This is one of those years. After a long stretch of logomania and deliberate dishevelment, the runways and, more importantly, the streets have swung back to the single most unpretentious garment ever sewn: a white shirt, well cut, doing absolutely nothing extra.

The white shirt's genius is its neutrality. Worn with tailored trousers it reads as authority. With jeans, as ease. Untucked over a swimsuit, sleeves rolled, it is the unofficial uniform of every good summer photograph ever taken.

It is also the rare garment that flatters by subtraction. A white shirt puts all the attention on the person — the face, the posture, the expression — which may be why portraitists have always loved it. Sit for a painting in a white shirt and nothing competes with you.

The current revival comes with a sensible amendment: fewer shirts, better shirts. Cotton poplin that holds a collar. Linen that is allowed to wrinkle because that is what linen is for. A cut with enough room through the body to move, sit, and live in.

The test of a good white shirt is not how it looks on the hanger but how it looks at six in the evening — softened by the day, slightly creased at the elbows, somehow better than it was at eight in the morning.

Like most things that last, the white shirt rewards care: washed cool, line-dried when you can, ironed when it matters and forgiven when it doesn't. It will outlast nearly every trend you buy this year.

Fashion will wander off again; it always does. The white shirt will be where you left it, at the front of the closet, ready to be rediscovered on schedule.