I'm looking for the opposite of good white shirts — cheap, thin white long-sleeve 100% cotton shirts, preferably very large in size.

November 3, 2008 7:11 AM

I'm looking for the opposite of good white shirts — cheap, thin white long-sleeve 100% cotton shirts, preferably very large in size.

When I work out or do anything sweaty, I like wearing a very oversized (but thin) shirt over everything else. And by oversized, I mean huge. I have just a couple of shirts like this, but of course there's no sign of the manufacturers on the labels still existing online.

Target left me cold. Kohl's? Nope. I thought eBay would have a ton of them. About as cheap as I can find them online is fifteen dollars. Not even Walmart has anything but nice white shirts. Not that nice, but still nicer than I can justify sweating in. Even suppliers of blank shirts (not a lot of those for long sleeves) seem to hover around the fifteen dollar mark. Marshall's? Mostly shirts of the icky variety.

Is this just one of those things where the absolute bottom price is fifteen bucks unless I'm purchasing a hundred of them?

posted by adipocere to clothing, beauty, & fashion (16 comments total)

Hanes® Beefy-T® T-Shirt - Long Sleeves, white, size: XXL, two for $20.
posted by nitsuj at 7:24 AM on November 3, 2008

I would poke around here for really cheap t-shirts.

They even organize their stuff by weight, so if you want a really thin thing, go for something like this and stay away from the beefy Ts.

Also, though the site looks cheap and scammy, I've bought from them before and the company is actually very nice to work with.
posted by phunniemee at 7:31 AM on November 3, 2008

If you want a thin, white, and large, why not just get a pack of crew-neck undershirts in a large size? Something like this, perhaps? The linked shirts are $15 for 3, and I would think you could find something similar in Target/Walmart/Kohls if you look in the undershirt section.
posted by musicinmybrain at 7:34 AM on November 3, 2008

I'd keep an eye on Old Navy. They have large sizes (up to XXXL in men's) and if you don't need WHITE t-shirts, a lot of the time they put the least popular color shirts on extra sale after awhile. Right now they have a lot of long sleeved t's for $10, and I've seen them get even cheaper during their frequent sales. Also, if you go to a store in person, their clearance rack should have a lot available in extreme sizes (e.g. the XXXLs and Ss will be leftover) and random colors that are out of season. I've bought T's there for $2 at times.
posted by tastybrains at 7:37 AM on November 3, 2008

Check out walgreens. They put cheap tshirts in the front of their store 4 for 10.00 quite frequently.
posted by nougat at 7:52 AM on November 3, 2008

Hanes® Beefy-T® T-Shirt - Long Sleeves, white, size: XXL, two for $20.

I get them cheaper than that at Jiffy Shirts where I can buy them at the bulk price with no minimum. This is where I get all of my polo shirts. But you can get 5XL shirts in white for $3.43 each!
posted by parmanparman at 7:54 AM on November 3, 2008

The OP doesn't call out t-shirts specifically, which leads me to believe that he/she might actually be looking for button-up shirts.

If that's the case, Land's End sold me a couple of nice white oxfords that were supposedly irregular (tho I couldn't find anything wrong with them) for under $10 each. And I wear an 18" neck (XXL).
posted by DandyRandy at 8:50 AM on November 3, 2008

On reread, never mind.
posted by DandyRandy at 9:31 AM on November 3, 2008

Sorry, was in a meeting. I'm looking for long-sleeve shirts, rather than T-shirts.

And, preferably, I'm looking at the button-up, rather than the pull-over type. I should have added that in.

I hit Land's End before without any luck, but perhaps I didn't look closely enough.
posted by adipocere at 9:35 AM on November 3, 2008

In that case...
posted by phunniemee at 9:57 AM on November 3, 2008

Thin, white, oversize, button up rather than pullover, wear it over your other clothes: What you are describing is not a shirt, it's a lab coat or lab jacket. Have you tried searching for this?
posted by ghost of a past number at 10:46 AM on November 3, 2008

Try secondhand. Here in England, at least, the shirts in charity shops seem always to be in the larger or very large sizes. Because they are already somewhat worn, they'll also be thinner than your average shirt. And they ought to be very cheap indeed.
posted by Acheman at 11:04 AM on November 3, 2008

Lab coats from American Science & Surplus.
posted by djb at 11:13 AM on November 3, 2008

It's clear what you want is an Oxford style shirt, right? Not a lab coat, nor yet a T-shirt. This search seems to be coming up with results, though it still may take some digging to find your size in white.
posted by darksasami at 3:45 PM on November 3, 2008

Oxford! That's the magic word! Thank you!

Yeah, I was contemplating wearing a lab coat to a gym and wondering precisely how long it would take security to haul the crazy guy out of the weight room.
posted by adipocere at 5:06 PM on November 3, 2008

Well whaddaya know, I was right after all.

Regarding my Lands End recommendation, look in the Overstocks section under 'Not Quite Perfect' - that's where I found my shirts. None there at the moment, but I suspect that it's restocked fairly regularly, After all, nobody's perfect.
posted by DandyRandy at 11:25 AM on November 4, 2008