When in Doubt, Wear a White Oxford Shirt

The story behind the white Oxford shirt is a lot less thrilling than you’d expect. It didn’t earn that fancy-sounding sobriquet through some sacred connection to the tony British university; instead, the shirt's signature cotton fabric was just one of four named after a group of schools picked by a Scottish mill for their associations with society’s upper crust. (19th century marketing at its best!) But of the quartet—the others were Harvard, Cambridge, and Yale, FYI—only the white Oxford shirt achieved menswear icon status, becoming a quintessential emblem of American prep as a “sporting shirt” (?!) and then as a staple of casual attire. Nowadays, Oxford-cloth shirts come in every color imaginable, but none of ‘em look quite as classic as the OG—especially when they’re thoroughly worn-in and a little wrinkled. Below you’ll find 16 of our absolute favorites, each one more ready than the last to imbue your jeans, chinos, and trousers with the unmistakable swagger of adopted American royalty.