Throw Out the "Go-Out" Shirt
What makes you think a loud shirt that's inappropriate by day will look cool unbottoned after hours? Plus: Watch the video escapades of real-life fashion offenders; and sound off about this troubling style trend in the comment section.
-By Katherine Wheelock
Photos: WireImage.com (10), INF (2), Photofest (1), Corbis (1), Getty (1)
No doubt you've earned a night out. All week you rose at a painfully early hour, dutifully tied a four-in-hand, and headed off to an airless office. You deserve to let loose. There's a cocktail for that. There is not, contrary to what guys streaming into velvet-roped clubs on Saturday nights seem to think, a shirt for that.
"You can tell it's the shirt the guy saves for the weekends," designer John Bartlett says. "You get the feeling it has hair gel stains on it from the last time he went out."
You can spot this article of clothing through whiskey goggles from 50 yards away. It's a button-down shirt, usually untucked and always in a print—multicolored stripes, paisley, florals—or a solid color with a slight sheen. If it could speak, the Go-Out Shirt would say what the man wearing it is burning to blurt out—"Yes, I sell mutual funds for a living, but I'm a really fun guy!"
"There's nothing more repulsive than a shirt that's supposed to say 'I'm fun,'" says Paul Stura, a New York stylist who's dressed Heath Ledger and Daniel Craig. "And it always looks like it's a 'blouse of the week' from a chain like Mexx or Cignal."
"A 'Friday-night shirt' is usually worn by somebody really young," says Jeffrey Kalinsky, owner of Jeffrey in New York and Atlanta. "They're also worn by someone older who's trying to look young—someone who just got out of a relationship."
If you see nothing embarrassing about laying naked your enthusiasm—your desperation, really—for a night that ends in cherry bombs and a good groping, then by all means, keep reserving one shirt in your closet for after 8 p.m., an eggplant one with shiny pinstripes, even. Go ahead and walk home from work humming "Everybody's workin' for the weekend" and pumping your fists in the air while you're at it.
But know that admitting you draw an imaginary line in your closet between your "work" clothes and your "play" clothes or your "business" shirts and your "dress" shirts is like announcing that Mommy laid out your clothes for you. You're not a parochial-school kid forced to button himself into a uniform every day. You're a grown man who knows very well that there's a vast middle ground between an outfit appropriate for a meeting with Sumner Redstone and one suited for happy hour.
"The lines have been so blurred between work and weekend," Bartlett says. "I don't make a big distinction between my everyday clothes and my going-out clothes." That's not a lament about sloppiness; it's an encouraging appraisal of men's fashion. What you wear to work, you can go out in without looking like a stiff. Undo a button. Take off the jacket. Change into jeans. Just don't put on a shirt flattered only by the rosy neon glow of club lights. You're going to look awfully silly when no one's up for Red Bulls and vodka after dinner anyway.
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I think some of the Go Out Shirts in the video are pretty cool, plus I own some of those same shirts. Jim in Racine, Wisc.
kingofshirts
Jun 4, 2007 11:06:53 PM
sooooo... basically go shirtless, or wear a sweater? Loving all the helpful suggestions :)
eatstatic
Jun 6, 2007 5:49:26 PM
so don't wear a button down shirt, got it. what would you suggest?
bolos
Jun 6, 2007 7:20:38 PM
This was a funny article, but it aims to make fun of the average guy who is making an effort to be cool and probably is cool to his own group of people. But readers of Details are supposed to be more attuned to what is truly stylish, reader and writer alike get to laugh and poke fun at people. Then again, maybe the article truly helped some people.
kparrish
Jun 7, 2007 1:05:52 AM
HA! This author says we shouldn't be wearing patterned button down shirts. Take a flip through the magazine and note how many times they have ads for just that type of shirt! Guess it's okay when you're whoring out magazine space for ad money. So I guess we have to always: 1-Wear a tie- or 2- wear a sweater- or 3-wear a t-shirt. Some fashion advice that is.
captainr
Jun 18, 2007 9:28:19 PM
From a woman's perspective: the striped "Friday night" shirt refrenced in this article is perceived exactly how the author calls it. It tells the ladies you are depressed, on the rebound and trying (really hard) to seem cool/ fun. Advertising is everywhere, just bc you see these shirts being sold doesn't mean you should adopt them as your personal style. Wear a t-shirt, or do just what they suggest and just alter what you had on before for the bar. Try to stand out in the vast sea of lame button downs in in a unique and/or professional looking way.
kimberly10
Jun 19, 2007 1:25:27 PM
Don't you have to dress in a button down to get into the clubs?
the0704
Jun 20, 2007 11:34:20 PM
This article was the exact kind of pretentious crap that makes me hate this magazine. So its wrong to have a difference between work and go out clothes? There are 10s of thousands of people with office jobs with strict dress codes. Sorry if I dont want to out in white and blue button-downs like i wear everyday at work. Whats wrong with wearing something a little more colorful or different than I can get away with in the office? Most of us would get laughed out of the office if we tried to wear a suit jacket with grey jeans. This magazine blows.
matt07
Jun 27, 2007 3:56:28 PM
If you hate this magazine so much, why are you reading it and posting comments to the site? Just wondering.
dex248
Jul 8, 2007 2:04:32 AM
And now I just wonder. . .how would one know he or she hated this magazine without reading it???
kycats75
Aug 13, 2007 9:16:43 AM
The key to this whole mess is to have a stylish shirt with the correct tones and patterns from the seasons colour pallets but with some point of difference, something unique and interesting. A hybris shirt is a shirt that can be worn both for work and out casually. For example the shirt from Hewitt & May called their Maxima does all of that. Shirts are always going to be stripes, plains or prints. But look for something with a point of difference perhaps.
contactnkm
Jan 4, 2008 9:26:03 AM
This is one of the articles that made me fall in love with the dossie section and never miss it since I read this article as it points out so well the "cheese" factor in the local male society and one easy way to avoid it. Too bad that the bulk of the people who posted comments don't have what it take to appreciate this simple wisdom.
http://www.practicalhappiness.com
arkady39
Aug 18, 2008 7:59:08 PM