tee connoiseur

Not to be cliche, but I have been looking for a white tee shirt for the summer. This has been a months long endeavor. I used to always wear Jungmaven - for years - but, probably because I don’t have laundry at home so everything goes out to the laundromat where I’m terrible at sorting “do not dry” stuff out, and also they’re using the worst possible soap ever (I did try to give them nice, organic washing detergent, but they used half a bottle in one go so I thought it wasn’t sustainable) anyways - this is my reality and one of my flaws. I’m extremely imperfect when it comes to laundry (and other things too, I’m sure). Anyways so I tried on a nice white tea from Soeur, fit perfectly, was a little see through which I don’t love, but the shop owner was like, “you need to hand wash this.” In my opinion, that’s too high maintenance for a tee shirt. I also think that some people get joy out of caring for their clothes in that way and I really do not. No part of me wants to do that. Oh back to the Jungmaven thing, it kind of seemed like all of a sudden, at the same time, all of my Jungmaven teeshirts just became sad, like withered little guys that seemed perpetually wrinkled. I do have a couple of Flore-Flore shirts, which I like, but they are so thick, too thick to be ideal for summer in my opinion. Also I learned that you’re not supposed to dry those either .. which makes sense because all of my Flore-Flore stuff seems a touch tighter than when I bought it. This past weekend, a band that my husband used to work with was in town, playing a show in East Williamsburg and I decided to walk there from Greenpoint to meet them all, and Tangerine in Williamsburg was on the way, so I stopped there. I got my white tee - Nu Swim. I love how it fits and feels :) I wore it last night to an event where the dress code was “wear white” (can’t resist the urge to indulge in an outfit pic.)

I am terrified to wash it. That’s the thing with white tees. You can’t really indulge in waiting too long to wash because all of your imperfections in the form of tea stains, leaning back on a dirty bench, dropping a delicate dish at dinner and having it splatter on you, are right there on your chest or on your sleeve.

I also went to see the new 6397 collection yesterday - they have a spacious, huge-windows-bright showroom on Broadway that’s been there for 30 years and I LOVED the feel of their tee shirts. Like ~12 years ago, when I lived in Portland, Oregon, my roommate gave me her boyfriend’s old shirt. This was a perfect old shirt. In feeling (soft and worn, even then) and in color (charcoal turning into navy?) and one that has sat in a drawer at my parents house since moving back to the East Coast. I wear it whenever I’m there. Its one flaw is that it’s a Jack Daniels tee shirt. It’s kind of a big flaw because the logo, screen printed in white, is massive and takes up the entire front of the shirt. When I was at my parents house a few weeks ago, I finally brought the teeshirt back to Brooklyn with me. So far, I’ve worn it inside out (you can still see the logo, but I like to think that you can see it.. less) that 6397 tees feel like that old shirt, but without the massive logo. I told the designer that I loved the tees and she introduced me to "Stella, the tee shirt connoisseur.” Later, when Stella jokingly repeated that she was a “tee connoisseur” I thought she said “tea connoisseur” and got super excited. One thing I learned is that they do their tees with one line of stitching on the bottom (which is apparently an old school, 50s thing) and most other brands (including the Flore Flore tee I was wearing) do two. The one was cute!

Anyways, I know this is a tea newsletter versus a tee newsletter.. let’s see, what else happened this week..

I’ve been reading Graydon Carter’s book. I picked it up at the Air Mail store in the West Village and it’s such a great subway read. I love the indulgent name dropping (I don’t know who most of the names are but am still left thinking, wow these people sound really interesting and important.)

I also stumbled across a BEAUTIFUL bookstore called Left Bank Books. They had a first edition Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, J D Salinger. I don’t really collect first edition books, I’m okay with beaten up books, and also, I don’t consider myself a collector (though I do refer to my books as a collection, and have one other collection which maybe I’ll write about another time..) As far as “collections” go, you have to admit that first edition books, in great condition, are one of the more admirable things to collect.

Also, we had people over for dinner three nights in a row this week, and really got the system down. Meat, steamed veg, rice and then for dessert, bowls of fruit and berries and then tea. The first night, we had black tea with milk and honey (I just put out all of Masha tea bag tins so everyone could pick, but everyone wanted black or earl grey.) The second night, holy basil with chamomile flowers that I had dried from the market, and the third night, coffee (lol), though I did make a small batch of chamomile for my daughter. I always pour tea over ice cubes for her to cool it down. “Mom hack” OH! That reminds me - I randomly was reading a Substack the other day - let me find it. It was

Hanna Park

and the piece was called “10 ways to be hotter by tomorrow morning” which I read immediately because of the title. And at the end it said

11. Either dress slutty or dress like Adam Sandler : because in either situation you’re exuding confidence and making a statement. Either be almost naked or dress like a boy. Anything in between will make you look like a square millennial mom.

And that’s when I realized - I am a square millennial mom! I am wearing perfect wide legged jeans with a fitted tee shirt basically EVERY DAY, whether or not I’m picking my daughter up from day care, I am going to bed at a reasonable hour, I am listening to a podcast on the treadmill, I am curious about the ingredients list on David protein bars.

My wild change at the market this week was adjusting from Honeycrisps to Evercrisps.