Review: Buttercloth Shirts Take The Stiffness Out of Dress Shirts

Buttercloth? What the heck is a Buttercloth? According to their site, it’s the dream of one American immigrant, coming here with a plan and a dream. Lots of hard work and an appearance on Shark Tank later, and it’s a company that claims to make dress shirts that are both stylish and soft. But it has to be hype, right?

Buttercloth was kind enough to send me the Blue Print in Black,  a delightfully geeky pattern (that they also have in blue – it’s just not my color). The first thing I noticed was the softness. As they claim, their shirts are like a well-loved t-shirt. One you’ve had for years. But would it prove to be as comfortable on day-to-day wear? To figure that out, i stress-tested my shirt on a 19 hour road trip with my family (including Junebug).

To call the Buttercloth shirt comfy would be an understatement. It was delightful to wear and I looked damn good wearing it. It was so comfortable that I made sure to wash it for the return trip and was thrilled to see it come out without a need to be ironed.

For my second stress-test, I wore my Buttercloth to ToyFair, where I received a ton of compliments. The memorable pattern helped me stand out from a sea of journalists. Also I didn’t shvitz the entire time.

Oh, and can I mention oh much I love that the shirts come in real XL, not XL “slimfit”, which is a nightmare? These are made to be worn by real people.

The downside of Buttercloth shirts is they aren’t cheap. With prices starting at $82, this is an investment. And guess what? Good clothing should be an investment, as Sir Terry Pratchett noted:

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

― Men at Arms: The Play

Don’t waste time buying cheap shirts that feel like sandpaper. Invest the time and the cash. Pick up a Buttercloth shirt. Your sense of touch will thank you.

Note: I was provided a Buttercloth shirt for review purposes. I basically live in it now. We are one.