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Ask ten different people to describe the perfect T-shirt, and you'll probably get ten different answers. The glut of opinions is one of the reasons today's tee market is crowded beyond measure, brimming with options that offer similar riffs on the same promise. For the last ten years, though, one brand has started cropping up in the conversation with a surprising frequency: Buck Mason, whose made-in-the-USA T-shirts have endeared themselves to fellas who couldn't care less about the latest designer shake-up—along with a growing number of guys who very much do.
Buck Mason was founded in 2013 by Sasha Koehn and Erik Ford, two Midwestern pals who originally envisioned the company as a subscription box service bundling third-party brands. After becoming frustrated with the middle-man business model, it dawned on them that they could skip a step by making their own threads instead. So when they introduced Buck Mason, the clothing brand, they decided to launch with the one product they knew every guy would be interested in: the perfect tee.
They began by developing a fabric they knew fellas were clamoring for—something softer than your average Hanes, but not overly flimsy, either. “[We wanted to] build an incredible fabric that would be a year-round staple,” Ford says, of what became the label’s proprietary, made-in-LA slub cotton. Nailing the perfect fit, though, proved trickier, involving an exhaustive, years-long process that yielded a pattern they only recently stopped tweaking. But the duo's most savvy move was listening to customer feedback early on, which led to a crucial, now-signature flourish: outfitting their tees with different hem shapes and lengths, so every guy could find at least one permutation right for them.
Koehn and Ford’s careful scrutiny paid off; their OG product remains a top seller. And by largely skirting the traditional wholesale partners and selling direct-to-consumer, they've managed to keep standards in-line and price points in-check, capping the retail cost of their hero T-shirt at $45—not cheap, exactly, but a pittance compared to competitors offering a similarly thoughtful product.
In the decade since, Buck Mason has evolved into something of an indie powerhouse, with 24 stores across America in cities like New York, LA, Washington, D.C., and Nashville. Its tight assortment of slubby tees has expanded to include include linen, hemp, and two different weights of Pima cotton; an especially heavyweight option known as the “Field Spec Tee” has become a surprise hit among Americana purists.
One result of Buck Mason's everyman appeal is that a good chunk of its core demographic is a bit, shall we say, style-agnostic. These aren’t guys who are worried about capturing their fits for posterity on Instagram—mostly, they're average dudes (and a bunch of dads) who simply want soft, relatively affordable T-shirts they can buy on repeat to wear with slim-stretch jeans and white sneakers. But that particular segment doesn't quite reflect the full breadth of the label's growing fandom. More than a few GQ staffers are recent converts, extolling the virtues of one particularly beefy tee's “feathery hand” and “spot-on fit”.
And then there are people like Thurman and Torrence Thomas: young, stylish, cowboy hat-wearing musicians that live in Austin, Texas. “I don't think anybody else is bringing that attention to detail, especially when it comes to a T-shirt,” says Torrence, who, exactly as Koehn and Ford imagined, cites the brand's dedication to fit and fabric as its primary selling points. The duo estimate they own about ten Buck Mason tees between them, and, in stark contrast to your run-of-the-mill business casual bro, often wear theirs with splashy western shirts, wild-style cardigans, and kicky leather boots.
If Buck Mason's success is any indication, the secret to T-shirt perfection might not lie in tinkering with a single option that everyone will love, but doubling-down on a range of tees designed to appeal to all kinds of folks—casual weekend shoppers, hard-boiled menswear nerds—without alienating any of them. As Thurman puts it: “I feel like, man—they make shirts just for us.”
