This is quite simply a better men's dress shirt. We started out with a basic task, how could we make a shirt that moved better on a cyclists body, but we wound up with something a bit more subtle. A buttondown shirt cut to fit the body better and open up a range of motion constrained by traditional shirt construction. An experiment in form, the Outlier Pivot Sleeve Shirt.
The basic challenge was straightforward, when you lean forward on a bike a buttondown shirt stresses. It pulls uncomfortably taut across the shoulders. The sleeves pull up exposing your wrists to the cold, and the tails pull out of your pants, leaving you either untucked or with a blooming blouse of a shirt. Our solution is the patent-pending Pivot Sleeve, a completely reconstructed buttondown that retains the traditional look and feel of a dress shirt while working equally well both on and off the bicycle.
From the front it looks like a well cut dress shirt. Like a good stage show, the magic takes place in back unseen by most. The underside of the pivot sleeve flows seamlessly into the back of the garment, creating an extra side panel. By removing the rear arm seam you can move your arm forward without restriction. It opens up a whole range of arm motion, move your arms forward or up and your shirt stays in place, cuff at the wrist, no cutting at the shoulders, your shirt tucked in properly. The extra side panel created by the pivot sleeve gives the shirt a strong form, the extra fluff found in most modern dress shirts is gone, this is how a shirt should fit.
To manufacture the shirts we left the friendly confines of Manhattan's garment district and headed across the river to the Gambert Shirt Corp, in Newark, New Jersey. This family owned company has been making nothing but dress shirts for over 75 years and they are true masters of the craft. Single needle tailoring throughout, 16 stiches per inch, cross and lock stitched buttons and an all over fine finish.
We stayed classic with the fabric as well, a two-ply Egyptian cotton spun and woven in Italy and Switzerland. If you expected some sort of tech fabric from us, well we hunted, and still are hunting, but so far we've yet to see a technical shirting fabric with a nice enough handle, so we went with quality and tradition and the result is a great shirt.
Made in Newark, New Jersey with 2-ply Swiss and Italian cottons. Available in Light Blue Oxford, White Pinpoint Oxford and Grey End on End for $144. Fits long and lean, if you're between sizes, size up.
Illustration by Andrew Hague
Illustration by Andrew Hague
Illustration by Andrew Hague
