The Five Shirt Rotation

look at that shirt

I own ten button down shirts total. 

I have five formal shirts, which sit in my closet year round, and then I have a five shirt rotation for my work week. They’re button down shirts, but not too formal that you have to tuck them in or iron them. 

I have a #1 go-to shirt, a white and orange, mini plaid shirt. It’s basically like 2001 Pedro Martinez – no one questioned his ace status on the Red Sox – and he was a lock for the Cy Young. I look great in this shirt. Though coincidentally, this is the shirt I receive the least compliments about. That probably explains my taste in clothes. 

I also have a solid #2 shirt, it’s Kelly green with white stripes. This shirt reminds me more of 2001 Curt Schilling. He played #1A to Randy Johnson that year, but arguably he was the guy in the playoffs, and some games he surely outshined the Big Unit. When push comes to shove, if I’m going on a big date, I’d be more comfortable with the orange shirt, and that’s why the green shirt gets dropped to #2. 

But after that it falls off. There’s a checkered blue/orange, a standard grey, and other bland shirts. There are inevitably Friday mornings that I look at my closet and debate which shirt to wear. Should I just go back to #1? I haven’t worn it since Monday. 

Then there’s the added wrinkle of the weekends. I’ll be hanging out with a friend that I don’t work with – so he hasn’t seen the #1 shirt yet. I should just wear #1, right? 

The other question – if I added another top shirt, say a #2 shirt that displaces my green shirt. It’s like when the Phillies added Cliff Lee to their already stacked rotation. It inevitably kicked a quality starter out of that five man rotation. But does that new shirt automatically decrease the quality of the other shirts? As in – do I like the #3 shirt less because it got downgraded to a #4? It still has all the qualities that made it a #3, but it just doesn’t seem as good when it’s a #4. 

How does the tie/shirt combo factor in? Will I have to wear the same tie/shirt combo every time or can I mix and match? It’d be complicated to mix and match, since the #1 tie and #1 shirt might not combine to be the #1 tie/shirt combo. I guess it’s about the the sum of parts being greater than the whole. To continue with sports analogies, it’s like the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat. You can have a superstar shirt and superstar tie, but you need more than that to be beautiful. 

Also, what happens if you work four or six days a week? Could my brain handle a six shirt rotation? 

There's a small chance I think too much about shirts. I hope I didn’t misspell shirts. 

See you on the other side, 

from ken  

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.