How do you update a product as tried and true as J.Crew’s Secret Wash shirt? You take it out west, it seems.
J.Crew introduced the Secret Wash shirt in 2005, and it quickly became a signature product of the New York retailer — if not the signature product. (In the early 2010s, a joke circulated online suggesting every man in New York City owned one in navy gingham.)
The name refers to the lightweight 100 percent cotton two-ply fabric that undergoes a “secret wash” formula to create a soft, lived-in feel.
Over the past twenty years, it has come in various fits but always in an oxford-style button-down with a single breast pocket — that is, until a westernized take on the Secret Wash shirt subtly popped up in the retailer’s newest batch of releases.
Making the preppy-western connection
The Secret Wash Western Shirt comes in three colorways — solid white, light-blue gingham and pink gingham — each equipped with pearl snap button enclosures.
The New York retailer has tapped into the fact that, even though pearl snap western shirts commonly feature in denim, the style stands as the counterpart to oxford-style shirts in modern western culture.