The warmer days of Spring are great for getting out and enjoying your area. I threw on some sneakers and decided to wander around my city in a casual spring outfit. Layering is always a great way to elevate an outfit, but as the temperature increases my love for layers tends to decrease. The denim jacket is a great layering piece for spring as it adds texture to an outfit and is not as heavy as some jackets that you may be wearing through the colder months. As the heat of the day reached its climax I decided the jacket was too much and opted for my base layers. The one that I will highlight is the band-collar shirt.
Go get yourself a band-collar shirt. You may have seen these shirts and wondered if someone forgot to attach the collar. If that was your assumption, you would be close to their origin. This style has received a lot of recent love stems from a history rooted in the working class American man, the military, Indian culture and much more. Hannah Montague in 1927 wanted to wash the collars of her husbands shirts, so she made them removable. What was left was the band-collar shirt. Another story is of the blue-collar workers, the farmers and factory workers, who never wore a tie for fear of it being stuck in machinery. Cutting the collar off or buying a band-collar shirt was the solution. In India in 1950 we see the shirts being made out of light cotton or linen. The sans-collar shirts not only provide a new profile to an outfit, but also keep the wearer cooler.
A clean and simple sneaker keeps the outfit styling while still subtle. Shading my retinas from the bright sun are the Ray Ban Folding Clubmasters, which lend themselves to the retro urban styling of this outfit. I have been growing my hair out a bit, and haven’t shaved back my sides recently like I usually do. I’m not sure what I will be doing next with my hair, but today was a topknot day. Getting my hair up is not only a more interesting look, but it also kept me cooler then if my hair was down.
Photo credit to Andrew Neel who makes me look way cooler then I am. Check out his work here!
