Looking for a GQ-favorite heavyweight T-shirt of equal heft? Check our guide to the best heavyweight T-shirts on the market.
I’m a sucker for a really good T-shirt. “Good”, though, is highly context-dependent: I love a cheap-and-cheery multipack as much as I do a rarified loopwheeled one-off—provided, of course, the latter lives up to the price-related expectations. So in that spirit, we need to talk about Buck Mason’s new Field-Spec 90s Boxy Heavy Tee, a mouthful of a product I’m enamored with in a “texting-friends-unprompted” kind of way. (Sincere apologies to said friends; this is who I am.)
This isn’t the first time we’ve praised the brand’s Field-Spec T-shirt, and it probably won’t be the last. A lot of that has to do with the tee’s particularly au courant fit: boxy and a little cropped, but not in peak-Warrick Dunn kind of way. Instead, it sits somewhere between ‘slim’ and ‘classic’—on me, it lands right around the hips, immediately below my natural waist, at the waistband of mid-rise pants or just above the pockets of higher-rise ones. I’ve worn it with chinos, fatigues, jeans, and proper trousers, and it’s as close to a Goldilocks silhouette as I’ve encountered.
The fit might be the star of the show, but the fabric selection deserves prominent co-star credit. You can opt for the midweight Toughknit fabric—soft to the touch, smooth texture—or the midweight, indigo-dyed Yuma fabric—a 70/30 cotton/hemp blend with a touch of nep and a ton of visual depth—and walk away measurably happier than you would be with any alternative.
The fabric that surprised me most, though, is the titular Field-Spec, a ludicrously beefy jersey-knit cotton that clocks in at twice the density and weight of Buck Mason’s core tees. It boasts a beautiful texture and feels blanket-soft straight out of the box, a pleasant surprise considering its heft. I usually avoid heavyweight T-shirts, but I’ve found myself wearing this one so much that I should probably buy another.
Will this T-shirt solve all your T-shirt problems going forward? (You do have T-shirt problems, right?) My prior shopping habits say: well, probably not. But my prior shopping habits also say that a really good heavyweight T-shirt is hard to find, and if Buck Mason’s newfangled Field-Spec tee can convince me to beef up my rotation, you won’t be the last person I gently harangue about it.
