singlets

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29901, 15 August 1962, Page 9

singlets

Comfort and shape are probably the main factors influencing the design of men’s underwear in New Zealand—where the American liking for striped and polka-dotted under-shorts has never really caught on. So it is only on the rare occasions when a man is caught with his shirt off, as it were, that any thoughts of style, fashion or appearance exercise the mind.

Such an unhappy thing occurs almost daily at the Health Department’s chest X-ray clinic in Armagh street, where the old assurance that shirts stay on has apparently been dropped without warning.

Now, the prospective photographic subject is directed to a long narrow room equipped like a bathing shed with small cubicles along one wall. Outside each cubicle stands a man, and behind each man hangs a shirt. The atmosphere can be embarrassing. No-one has taken much thought in choosing the day’s—or the week’s—singlet. Rarely is such a motley collection of singlets exposed to view. They range from the salmon-pink, long-sleeved, high-neck, drape-look singlet to the skimpy silk model with plunging neck fore and aft. In between come heavy knitted styles, Scandinavian fish-net designs to provide scientific insulation, American T-shirts and the black models favoured by people like boiler-makers. These variations cause cringes enough when revealed to the vulgar gaze, but evidence of the garment’s age—such as tears, patches, vari - coloured darns, or unintended pastel dyeing in the domestic washing machine—make the sufferer hide in a cubicle until his name is called. There are some who have the presence of mind to size up the situation at once and with one dextrous movement slip out of shirt and singlet together, pretending that come hail or snow they are so hardy that they wear nothing beneath the shirt.

But even they will probably profit from the harrowing experience, and make sure they reserve one unremarkable singlet for any similar emergencies in the future.