Every online shirt purchase is an act of faith. You’re trusting a size chart, a stranger’s return policy, and your own memory of what size you wore three summers ago. That last one is the problem.
Here’s the sizing conversation nobody wants to have: your size didn’t change. Your relationship with denial did.
We hear it often. “I usually wear a medium.” Sure. In 2019. Bodies change. Fabric doesn’t stretch to cover the gap between who you were and who you are now, no matter how much faith you put in it.
So here’s how to actually get this right the first time.
Measure yourself, not your memory. Pull a tape measure around the fullest part of your chest. Write the number down. Compare it to the size chart on the product page, not to whatever size you’ve been buying out of habit since college. The chart doesn’t lie. Memory does, a little, every time.
Know what you’re buying it for. A shirt from the Dry Wit collection — something like I Never Get Enough Credit, where the whole point is a hidden collar line only you ever see — should sit close enough that you’re not wrestling fabric to find the joke. A layering piece you’ll wear under a flannel come fall is a different call. Size up. Give it room to be a base layer instead of the whole outfit.
If you land between two sizes on the chart, don’t split the difference and hope for the best. Pick on purpose — the smaller size if you like a shirt that sits close and tailored, the larger one if you want room to move and something you can layer. That’s a real decision with a real answer, not a coin flip.
When in doubt, size up once. Down twice, and you’re negotiating with a shirt for the rest of the day. A slightly loose fit still looks intentional. A slightly tight one looks like an argument you lost with a dryer.
Which brings us to care. Wash cold, and turn it inside out first — the print lasts years longer if it’s not getting sandblasted by everything else in the load. Skip the dryer if you can manage it, or run it on low and pull the shirt out while it’s still a little damp. High heat is where good shirts go to become smaller, sadder versions of themselves. Nobody wants that. Neither does the shirt.
One more thing worth saying plainly: sizing yourself honestly isn’t a defeat. It’s just accuracy. There’s something almost freeing about ordering the size that actually fits instead of the size you’re quietly negotiating with. You stop thinking about the shirt and start just wearing it, which was the whole point of buying it in the first place.
We didn’t build these to be managed. Not tugged at the hem, not worried over in a family photo. Just worn — comfortable enough that you forget it’s there, and clear enough in what it says that people notice it anyway.
So measure the chest, size honestly, wash it right. That’s the whole system. No faith required for this part. Just a tape measure and a little patience with yourself.