A few weeks back I was lucky enough to get a ride in a legendary motor. The Mercedes-Benz 300 SL “gull-wing” sports car of 1954 was the fastest production car of its day, and the first petrol-powered motor to feature fuel injection directly into the combustion chamber. This machine is quite simply a thing of beauty. With its smooth, streamlined curves, and extraordinary futuristic upwards-opening gull wing doors, it can’t be bettered.
It got me thinking: what other products could simply be rolled out half a century later and still hold their own? Funnily enough, I realised that I was wearing one.
At first glance, the humble T-shirt might not seem to have much in common with a piece of spectacular German engineering but, as with the 300 SL, it’s hard to improve on. It’s name, just like the “gull-wing”, comes from its shape — a simple T across the shoulders and down through the body. And its use as a casual outerwear garment dates from roughly the same time as Mercedes’ famous coup?.
T-shirts, though, have a long history as underwear garments — dating back to the 19th century when they were worn by stevedores and miners and apparently the US Navy, which had them as military issue around the time of the Spanish-American War.
The garment became a piece of outerwear only after the Second World War, when US veterans took to wearing them on civvy street. Prior to that you may have seen one on a labourer or ranch-hand, but not in everyday use. By 1951, though, when Marlon Brando wore one in A Streetcar Named Desire, the T-shirt was establishing itself as an alternative to a shirt for the youth of the day. Two years later, Brando immortalised the T-shirt, jeans and leather jacket combo when he donned them as ultra-rebel Johnny in The Wild One — and a new teenage uniform was born.
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The Mutton is more of a T-shirt and suit man than a hairy biker and chooses his Ts accordingly. Thus my current favourites are short-sleeve crew necks by Sunspel, a small outfit in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, which I have mentioned in this column before as a hidden gem (even though it has collaborated with designers such as Paul Smith, Margaret Howell, Thom Browne, Richard James and Kris Van Assche).
Sunspel, founded in 1860, makes Ts in luxurious 100 per cent twofold Egyptian cotton: two very light cotton threads are twisted together and linked. The garments are strong, lightweight, smooth, breathable and of great quality so they don’t lose their shape.
They also feel as if they are tailored in a sleek way, which is pretty flattering (especially in the “darks” — black, charcoal and navy — which are always a good idea, as colours go, for those of us spreading gently into middle age). They are medium length, so they sit at the hip, have a bound neck, a double stitched hem and are machine washable at 40C. What more could a man want?
Sunspel now has a store at 10-12 Davies Street, Mayfair, London W1; sunspel.com