The Rite Record-Journal

Henleys: usually when we see them, we think of pioneers and prospectors, toiling and sweating in the Wild West, their buttoned-up undershirt stained with blood, coal, or worse. Your average miner in the 1890s did wear a button-up under his clothes in cold weather, but instead of a henley shirt it was more likely a one-piece "union suit," or what we call "long underwear" these days: I'm sexy and I know it. However, in the late 1890s we find examples of standalone henley shirts with a shorter placket worn as underwear: Ecru undershirt with pearl buttons - Sears-Roebuck 1897 Underwear...

The Rite Stuff phase two is here, just like a hectic new phase at Del Boca Vista, but without Morty Seinfeld and his raincoat sales advice. You might not want to listen to Morty's advice for selling clothes: Case in point. Sales of the Heracles were buzzing along, people were posting online about it, I was picking up stockists, but I was getting lots of queries about XL and XXL sizes. This despite the fact that the shirt runs a bit large. You can imagine how it feels to see all these sales slip through my fingers because I miscalculated...

No, we won't slay the Hydra, or take Cerberus for a walk in the park today, but we will return to the Heracles shirt and the wait I was enduring while it was in production. Again, waiting, but soon I had an estimated delivery date: the first week of June. I counted off the days, and when the shipment went out I tracked it online, waiting for it to clear customs (and rueing how much they'd want to charge me).   "Wait, I thought this blog post was about me." The first box finally arrived in a heavy downpour that threatened to...

We left off last time with me returning from Sendai back to Taiwan in early February, production on the sample of the Heracles shirt ready to begin. Now it was time for me to simply wait, and wait I did, until right at the mid-point of April. That was when the first sample arrived. It's been a while since I was an actual kid on Christmas morning, but this was pretty darn close to replicating the feeling. The first Heracles sample in all its glory. . The first sample was stellar; John Lofgren said it needed a slight collar adjustment,...

After designing an initial shirt, I decided against becoming a one-man brand and believed it best to instead have my products made, but only to the highest standards in the industry. Go big and go West or go home, right? The next question was whether to have the Heracles shirt made in the USA or Japan. The former proved fairly simple at first, with factories responding readily and willing to work. But still, I hesitated over concerns that the construction quality wouldn't be up to par, and the shipping from there to me in Taiwan would be too high. A popular...