By Ray A. Smith
It's the uniform of 1960s NASA engineers, Dwight from "The Office" and the "Revenge of the Nerds" nerds. Now the menswear industry is trying to revive the short-sleeve button-down shirt and transform it from retro geek to spring-summer chic.
Upscale department stores, designer boutiques and mall chains are selling short-sleeve woven shirts, the kind worn with ties and tucked into pants.
Updated interpretations of the shirts showed up on the Spring 2011 runways of Dolce & Gabbana's D&G line, Jil Sander and Richard Chai as well as in the collections of Michael Kors and J. Crew, which carries 10 styles of short-sleeve woven shirts, including five dressy-casual versions.
The look is in stark contrast to the lumberjack and preppy styles from recent years. "It's less about that log-cabin and hiking-in-the-mountains kind of guy," says Eunice Lee, founder and designer of Unis, an understated men's label which "did an explosion" of short-sleeve woven shirts this season. "That NASA engineer, this is the modern version of that," Ms. Lee says.
The newer short-sleeve woven shirts differ in some crucial ways. They are slimmer fitting. The sleeve, almost elbow-length in the past, is bicep baring and narrower. The new fit and sleeve length are in keeping with the more body-conscious looks trending in menswear. And while designers often showed them on the runways buttoned up all the way, in stores, the look is less severe, more relaxed.
But even with that reboot, most men may not find the look easy to pull off. Some brands are taking great pains to ease men into the idea of tucking a short-sleeve woven shirt in pants, previously a fashion no-no.
"We tried to show it in a relaxed way that wasn't too intimidating," says Jack O'Connor, J. Crew's men's style director. Its catalog shows a man in a slightly rumpled short-sleeve shirt with sleeves rolled up worn with a slim cotton tie and tucked into a pair of light slim-fit jeans.
The shirts' heyday was the '50s and '60s. Manufacturers ramped up production during World War II to outfit the increasing number of workers in military-related businesses, as long sleeves could be dangerous if caught in machinery, says Mark-Evan Blackman, menswear specialist at the Fashion Institute of Technology. In the post-war years, madras short-sleeve shirts tucked into brightly colored trousers was a popular country-club look.
Part of short-sleeve woven shirts' attempted comeback is due to menswear's continuing obsession with style from the late '50s and early '60s, especially as seen on the TV show "Mad Men," says Michael Fisher, men's editor at Stylesight, a fashion-trend research firm. "That pressed, polished, clean-cut look from back then seems to be really appealing right now," he says.
By the '60s, the shirt had evolved into a dress shirt, "for anyone other than bankers," says Mr. Blackman. "It tended to be worn by engineers, behind-closed-door professions, the ones who weren't necessarily meeting the clients." The look fell out of favor beginning in the '70s.
"We have no short-sleeve dress shirts at Neiman Marcus. Not one," Derrill Osborn, a former men's clothing director at the retailer, told this newspaper in 1997. Neiman Marcus still doesn't sell short-sleeve dress shirts, but it does carry short-sleeve woven sport shirts, as does its Bergdorf Goodman store. Nickelson Wooster, men's fashion director for Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, says the stores bought the short-sleeve looks from labels including Band of Outsiders, Rag & Bone and Thom Browne expecting they would be popular with their younger, fashion-forward customers.
Short-sleeve shirts are still not seen as office appropriate.
To pull off the look for casual occasions, the shirt needs to hit halfway up the bicep, says men's style consultant Julie Rath. "It should be snug but not too snug; you don't want to look like you're showing off curls for the girls," she says.
The tucked-in look isn't for everyone. It won't work for men with shorter torsos: "It will only emphasize how short-waisted they are," she says.
Adding a tie can be tricky. "You really run the risk of getting it wrong and looking like the IT guy," says Ms. Rath. For neckwear, Glenn O'Brien, author of "How To Be A Man," a style and behavior guide for men published in April, recommends wearing a slim madras or seersucker tie rather than a regular-width silk tie, since the shirts aren't technically dress shirts. He cautions that sport coats and suit jackets "don't look quite as good over a short-sleeve shirt," as the shirt gets all bunched up in the arm area.
Ms. Rath says that even with a tie, a short-sleeve woven shirt can be worn to work "only if you're in advertising or work in some sort of creative industry." Otherwise: "Save it for the weekend."
