Are you on the hunt for The Perfect T-shirt? 

This is where the business-school side of me tells me I should say that Sawyer, my new T-shirt pattern, is it. You need to try it, and then your search for the perfect T-shirt will finally be over. The truth, though? Sawyer very well may be a perfect T-shirt for you. But I don’t think it’s the holy grail of T-shirts that will replace every other T-shirt you’ve ever owned. 

For years, I believed there had to be one T-shirt that solved everything: the one silhouette, one sleeve length, one make or purchase that would work with jeans, tailoring, shorts, sweats, under a blazer, dressed up, dressed down, you name it. Once I found it, the search would be over forever. I would have the T-shirt, and I could move on to the next perfect thing to find. 

Except that search kept breaking down. Fashion changed. Fabrics changed. My eye changed. I found patterns I loved and swore by, made them repeatedly, wore them to death, and then eventually reached for something else. And that made me feel like I failed. Didn’t I just find the perfect tshirt? Why don’t I want it anymore? What is wrong with me? 

Eventually, I decided the problem was that I hadn’t designed it myself. So I did. Surely, if I controlled the silhouette, the fit and the fabric, I could finally make the perfect T-shirt. And that is how Beck was born. I finally created the perfect tee! Then, a few years later, I found myself reaching for other T-shirts. What. 

One day  I decided to clean out my closet full of tshirts, which contained a crazy amount of both me-made and bought T-shirts. And that is when something finally clicked.  The T-shirts I actually wanted to keep weren’t all trying to do the same job. They fell into different silhouette families. Some were fitted. Some lived somewhere in the middle. Others were oversized. And within those categories there were even more variations. I wanted to keep at least one from each of the three silhouette families.

What I reached for depended on the rest of my outfit and its proportions, the tshirt fabric, my mood, and the look I wanted that day. The perfect t-shirt changed almost every time I got dressed. Maybe instead of one perfect t-shirt, there were a few of them? That changed the way I think about the whole category. 

I no longer believe there is one perfect t-shirt. I think there are great solutions to different problems. Now, and this is important, it does not mean that we should all fill our closets with dozens of different tees. That is not the lesson here. 

You might have one or two favourite fitted tees, one or two favourite relaxed tees, and one oversized silhouette that works beautifully for you. Or maybe you don’t like fitted tees at all. Maybe oversized isn’t part of your wardrobe. Maybe your entire T-shirt wardrobe lives in the middle ground. You do not need to fill categories simply because they exist.

The point is to understand which categories actually matter to you, and then become selective within them. And, both as a consumer and a designer, this realization is kind of shitty. My business background tells me that I should sell you the idea of The Perfect Tshirt and then conveniently explain that mine is the one you’ve been waiting for. But I don’t want to do that. It conflicts with everything I’ve experienced, and it isn’t what I want to build Anna Zoe around. 

As consumers, we are constantly being told that this is the perfect item. Here it is! Buy it and your problem will be solved. And maybe it really does work beautifully for you. But when it doesn’t, it can start to feel like the problem is you. Why doesn’t it work when everyone says it’s perfect? Or maybe it did work. You loved it for a while, and now you don’t. Wasn’t it supposed to be it? 

So this brings me to the two things I want you to take away from this, because when I started writing this post, I realized I had accidentally wandered into a much larger conversation about sewing, shopping and personal style that absolutely will not fit here. 

Understand what job an item actually has in your life.

In the case of a T-shirt, think about the silhouettes you like, the proportions you tend to wear, the fabrics you enjoy, your lifestyle, your mood and your own taste. Unfortunately, this requires some personal reflection. I know. Terrible news. But if you want to move away from other people constantly telling you what is supposed to work for you, there really isn’t a shortcut around figuring out what you actually like.

Perfect does not mean permanent.

That works in two ways. What feels perfect can change from circumstance to circumstance. The ideal T-shirt for one outfit may be completely wrong for another. And what feels perfect can also change over time. You change. Your life changes. Fashion changes. Your eye changes. Something you once adored might stop feeling right for a while or forever. That doesn’t mean you chose badly. It just means you changed. After all, there is nothing more permanent than change.

And now I should probably bring this back around to my new T-shirt pattern, right? Maybe make a sale or something?

So I’ll say this: Sawyer is not the perfect T-shirt. It doesn’t have to be. It has a job. I designed Sawyer to live in that middle ground: not fitted, not oversized. Slightly boxy, easy, but still clean. It is exactly the kind of T-shirt I want to wear right now, in this season of my wardrobe and my life. Maybe it fills that particular job for you too?

Also, I think the fonts in the instruction booklet are pretty and I worked hard on the illustrations. So there.