For years and years, I searched for the indigo navy surplus work shirts that used to be found in Army Navy surplus stores. I remembered them as a kid. Picture the gentleman architect from Charlottesville who grew up on the family's ancestral farm (but was schooled at Woodberry and finished in Chapel Hill) who wore them while drafting in his study before getting some horticultural chore done in the back fourteen hundred. Like most awesome things, the more used, sun-drenched, and washed it got, the better it became.
While their civilian life was pastoral and perhaps a little cerebral, the chambray work shirt's naval life was anything but. I found this example of a chambray navy work shirt getting the most out a Douglas Dauntless.
I finally found a very nice reproduction of those old, vintage chambray work shirts. Uniqlo, with their famous denim lab in Los Angeles, developed a number of great vintage work wear items at a cut-rate price. I've purchased a number of their chambray work shirts as well as their 'hickory stripe' work shirts. The hickories are actually like wonderful OCBD--wonderful cotton oxford cloth dirt cheap. I've tried to do the 'Tucker Carlson' stripe OCBD shirt and repp stripe combo but my neck size is a little off. Looks great with a repp bow tie though. What is more Tucker Carlson than that?
