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Looking for advice: Office/Field/Comfort all in one?

jonmali

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Guys,

Let me start off by admitting that I realize I may be looking for a unicorn. However, as a long time lurker I know there is a lot of knowledge on this forum, so I figure if what I want exists then someone here will know about it.

SUMMARY-- I'm looking to find clothing for work day wear that is heat tolerant, appropriate in a casual office setting, extremely comfortable, and durable enough to take some outdoor wear.

Basically, I'm looking to simplify what I wear during the "95% workday". The majority of my time is spent working from home, so comfort is very important. There are 1-2 days per week I have to head outside and oversee some field work. I'm a hands-on kind of guy so on these days I'm sweating, moving things, climbing ladders, etc. Then there are other days where I have to head to my office, a client's office, a bank, etc. The dress code at my office and my clients is casual. My goal here is to find a type of shirt / pant combo that I can wear in all of these settings. I keep suits and appropriate attire at both my home and office for the other 5% of workdays where I need to suit up.

Please resist the "dress for the occasion" temptation. If you feel the urge, I ask that you please start a separate thread as it would be off topic here.

To add additional detail to my preferences, I'll give a list of examples of things that either I am considering or have considered (you don't really need to read any of this, I'm just giving further color/detail):

For shirts..

1) Normal cotton button downs, just replace them as they wear out from outdoor wear and tear -- I have several very nice shirts from Joe Hemrajani that I wear when I need to look nice for work, or for evening attire. I could get them to make me a few more and keep it simple. I would prefer, though, if I could find something more comfortable for all day wear since quite often I'm just sitting in my home office chair by myself. Even an expensive, properly fitted cotton shirt feels more restrictive than a ridiculously cheap athletic shirt, most likely due to the stretch/give in the shirt.

2) Some sort of athletic style or polyester shirt (golf shirts, etc) -- Anything that looks excessively "athletic" or has short sleeves is out. I ordered one of Ministry of Supply's "Apollo" shirts and while I haven't actually tested the shirt out yet during a workday it does seem to come very close to what I'm looking for. I would like for the shirt fabric to appear a little less "athletic" in style, and since they have a dressier shirt in their lineup I assume that would fit the bill. I would also like online tailoring options (like the guys at mytailor.com) to save me the time from taking it to a local tailor but that's a small gripe. My biggest concern is sweating in the polyester fabric.. I know that when I sweat in any of my polyester athletic or polyester fishing shirts it smells awful. Maybe they have fixed that problem, it just seems so prevalent in other polyester fabrics.

3) Recently I noticed "Wool and Prince" shirts -- These are supposedly durable, lightweight, breathable wool shirts. They look great except I see two potential issues. First, they only have 2 shirts available right now, neither of which is particularly plain looking (so, pretty quickly, I'm the "two shirt guy"). Second, I would think that even a lightweight wool shirt would feel more restrictive than a cotton shirt (or certainly an athletic shirt) and would therefore be significantly less comfortable.

For pants..

1) Jeans -- I can wear jeans without any issue unless I need to suit up, so there's no problem there. I do wear jeans quite often. However, personally I find jeans to be far less comfortable than other pants, and I would prefer to wear something a little nicer.

2) Performance chinos, i.e. Outlier etc -- I haven't ordered any of these by I looked closely at the Outlier pants on their website as well as reviews, etc. It looks like these are all cut slim. I have nothing against slim fitting pants for weekends, after-work, etc but I don't find it appropriate for work wear. If the Outlier chinos were even just a little more relaxed they would probably be perfect pants. Ministry of Supply also has chinos, and they have a "standard fit" option instead of a slim fit but I cannot find any reviews on them.. I may order a pair to try them out, it's difficult to tell from the pictures if the pants look "space age" or normal
 

Makoto Chan

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We are ever working towards the apotheosis of total stylelessness masquerading with some kind of dignity towards this forum.
 

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