Nigel Cabourn Baseball Shirt LS

Contrast piping is a construction detail before it is a decorative one. A piped seam has a folded strip of cloth set into it, which means the seam is doubled where the piping runs and is therefore stronger than the seam beside it, and it also means somebody had to sew a third layer into a join that only needed two. It is slow work and it is the reason piped garments cost what they do to make. What it does visually is draw a line along every edge it follows, so the shape of the garment is described in outline rather than left to be inferred. Combined with a zip front rather than a button placket, the result is a shirt that reads as a light jacket as much as a shirt, which is a genuinely useful thing to own between seasons. One hundred percent cotton, made in Japan: an ivory body with navy piping.

Piping is one of the few details that is unmistakably an expense rather than a shortcut, and it is almost extinct outside of sportswear reproductions. The zip is what makes this wearable as an outer layer rather than only as a shirt.

American sportswear is a smaller strand in Cabourn's archive than the military and working sources, and this is where it surfaces at its most finished.

One hundred percent cotton. Long sleeves, zip closure, contrast piping. Made in Japan. An ivory body with the piping in navy.

Sizing runs 50 and 52 on the house's shirt scale. A zip front does not have a button placket's give, so it holds a line across the chest more firmly than a buttoned shirt of the same size does. Ivory cotton shows what it touches; the navy running the edges does not.

Over the 9.5oz Basic T-Shirt, which is what a zip-front shirt is for. With the Army Cargo Pant or the Officer's Pant. Under the Jeep Coat when it turns.

Cool wash, gentle cycle, and do up the zip before washing, since an open zip runs against the cloth and against everything else in the drum. Dry flat or on a line rather than hot. Our care guidance covers cotton in more detail.

The SS Baseball Shirt is the short-sleeved relative and a different garment, cotton with a button front, and the 50's Cardigan is a cotton knit. Everything we carry from Nigel Cabourn is listed together.