The Fit of the Western Rise X-Cotton Shirt

I want to cover off on the fit of this shirt before I get into the Good and the Bad. Then I can break down the experience of wearing it and the fit in those sections.

Fit is something that is important to most people. In fact, it can be a reason you choose an off-the-rack shirt or not. It can be the reason you KEEP choosing that same shirt or brand (Hello, GAP oxford shirts). So for the record, I’m 5’6” and about 150lbs or so. I had a SM.

When they mentioned the fit profile was like their Limitless merino shirt, I was not at all surprised when I tried it on. It fit pretty much exactly like my original Limitless shirt. This was both good and bad.

The body and the shoulders on the shirt were pretty good. A bit long for me overall though.

The sleeves however: same issues as the Limitless. This is only an issue for us short gents, but they are much too long for a men’s small if you ask me. This is definitely built for a taller, lankier person that might not be short, but is thinner and needs less fabric. The sleeves were super long on me (as they were on the Limitless). To note, I did wash and dry it twice, just to see if that helped. It helped on the body length, but couldn’t do much for the sleeves.

So, off to the alteration factory I went. Once the sleeves were altered, I had a shirt I was comfortable wearing out. Both before and after photos taken of the sleeves. First two shots are “before”. I altered them a full cuff length.

Again this is only an issue for shorter guys. If you’re not shorter but like wearing men’s SM, this will be a non-factor for you.

The Look

This is a section I added for my recent Lululemon Commission shirt review and I think it applies here. In fact, I’d say the same thoughts apply. 

This is a shirt that is going to be good for most casual days to casual business (I purposefully did not say “business casual” here) scenarios. That includes tech company offices, casual dinners, bars, etc. I would not really consider it “business casual” in the traditional sense. I would still use more of a traditional oxford or dressier shirt in that scenario. But with that said, this means that it’s fantastic for a LOT of types of wear, and many people these days may never really be IN those situations where they need a more traditional dress shirt. I would not wear this with a blazer, for instance.

So, I don’t think this is a replacement for a proper dress shirt.

But it’s pretty dang solid for everything else. I said it earlier and I’ll re-iterate: it’s great for when you want to level up your casual look so you still do in fact look casual (not up tight) and don’t look like a slob or like you don’t really care. I think it’s awesome for that. Casual dinners and bars, this is great. Most travel situations and around town, it’s got you.

The Good

All the travel friendly features need to be mentioned here. It checks all the boxes and really, I can’t complain on that front. Great job Western Rise.

Next, they really, really succeeded on the fabric comfort. I felt the Lululemon Commission shirt was really comfortable, this blows it out of the water. I mean that. It feels like you’re wearing a heavier weight, long sleeve t-shirt. Who doesn’t like that feeling? But instead, you look like you know how to take care of yourself and are good at adulting out in public. Score. In fact, I’m wearing it right now while I’m typing.

For travel, I always have to touch on the odor control. Per usual in a non-natural fabric, we can’t really compare it to merino. It won’t touch merino. They have the Limitless for that. But we can compare it to the field of non-Merinos. How did it fare for me? Well, while in DC I wore it for a whole day of short walks and working on my laptop most of the day, I did not wear an undershirt. I then wore it to work for a full day in-office, with undershirt (Uniqlo Airism, for what it’s worth). In Lisbon, I wore it for a full day around town, and for dinner (being honest, having white I was kind of nervous to wear it to dinner while on a short trip with a short bench for shirts!). Lastly, because it was so comfortable I decided to wear it for the trip home. This meant from 10am Lisbon time to 930pm EST time, and two flights (we connected in London). 

It performed really well. I think I would not wear this in warmer weather - going all over town in any weather over 20C is probably going to get warm. But below that, I loved it. Giving it the smell test when I got home (much to the chagrin of my wife; the things I do for you readers, eh?) - I was pretty shocked to say it passed. While at that point, I’d personally put it in the wash. But if you had no choice and needed to stretch it for another half day or so, you could hang it up to air out and probably get it done. Keep in mind this depends on your chemistry and your deodorant (I used a combo of Thai Crystal on some days and Mando Unscented on the harder days).

Wrinkle resistance was solid as well. It’s not perfect, virtually nothing is in the real world. But the jersey style of the fabric and the material they use certainly does help it out and it experienced minimal wrinkles using it in my Matador Seg28 while en route and making sure to take it out and hang it once I got to my hotel.