The Shirt I hate to Love

Hollister Lake Hodges Button up – $39.50

I hate that I love this shirt.  I hate everything about the store it came from.  I hate how the store stinks of awful cologne when you walk by it, how the lights are insanely dim, and how it sells a California “lifestyle” to high schoolers who might have never been outside of their own non-California State.

I hate that they don’t have a men’s or women’s department, but instead “Dudes” and “Bettys.”  I hate the splashing of their gull logo on every damn piece of clothing they’ve ever made.  I hate the trendiness and the all too calculated marketing.

But I also love this shirt.  I love how the fabric is thicker than your normal run of the mill casual oxford.  That the collar buttons down so it won’t spread out like wings over v-neck sweaters.  How it can work in all four seasons.

I love being able to throw it on over a t-shirt, or un-tucked under something else.  How the shirt tail is cut perfectly short, yet won’t ride up at all.  How it feels  like its been tailored only it hasn’t.

And I hate that I can’t find a similar shirt anywhere else.  Because I’m too old to wear logos coveted by teens, and too impatient to put up with the atmosphere of the store it came from.  It was a lucky find four years ago in a store I had never seen before, and the insides of which I’ll never see again.