Which undershirts should you buy?

If you’re in the market for an undershirt (or several), what should you buy? It would seem that because the shirt provides no fashion sense and merely serves a workhorse, you should just pick the cheapest item to get the job done and move on.

I believe undershirts are the most underrated garment in your wardrobe.

Having owned many cheap shirts, I will not ramble on about the poor fit and the abrasiveness of the materials I’ve encountered. These same shirts wore out fast and quickly found themselves in the trash.

In this part of your closet, you need a work horse, not a show horse. Function should always trump fashion and investments always pay for themselves. Price equals quality and quality equals price, there are no substitutes.

While there are many brands on the market today, we are going to review the online, direct to consumer brand, RibbedTee.

RibbedTee Review

RibbedTee was founded in 2008 by Mike and Kim Schwarz. As stated on their site, the company’s mission is to “create the world’s most comfortable and best fitting undershirts, educating along the way, and help people in their personal journey to challenge the status quo.”

To put it succinctly, I think they deliver on their mission darn near 100%.

Made In the USA Underwear

While garment manufacturing has declined to about 3% of what we wear in the US, RibbedTee proudly manufactures in Los Angeles using other locally owned companies.

Buying made in the USA underwear and undershirts may not be important for everyone, but if you’re a fan of American manufacturing, this brand gets major bonus points.

For this review, I tested four shirts and three pairs of underwear.

RibbedTee Undershirts and Underwear

Here’s what I received for this review:

Undershirts

• EVO TENCEL (94% TENCEL / 6% Spandex) – $32
• CoolWear Supima (100% Supima Cotton) – $18
• Retro Fit Tri-Blend (50% Polyester / 38% Cotton / 12% Rayon) – $18
• MicroModal (50% MicroModal / 50% Supima Cotton) – $29

Underwear