The great white shirt

I recently went hunting for a white shirt.

Yes, that subtle, yet still very much “in-your-face”, rather obvious must-have in a man’s wardrobe — or so you would think.

I started with the “stalls” in town and after the usual karibu customer rush and senseless mumblings about how a flowery shirt three times your size is the perfect choice for your business appointment, my mind was almost screeching with a where-is -Connie Aluoch-when-you-need-her kind of desperation.

The fact is, unfortunately, if you need to impale that perfect white dress shirt, you probably need to shop like a woman.

I mean shop — leisurely, unfettered and with lots of chit chat with the fashion-challenged merchandisers and look at yourself in one too many shirts in the changing room before settling on a piece or sauntering off to the next store.

Or you could just let a stylist do the dirty work for you, if you can afford one that is.

For most men, the white shirt remains the poster child of straight-laced formality, an honourary ambassador of officialdom, probably buttressed by the formative years of our prim school uniforms.

It demands decorum in that it broadcasts the slightest of stains, sweat patches and advertises creases with the foreboding indifference of a discipline master.

Heck, even the wrong choice of material could project a pronounced pair of jutting ‘buttons’ on your chest area.

This shirt is almost like an artist’s canvas that brings to life the sartorial sketch of man’s look as painted by the strokes of his tie, jacket, pocket square and other accessories. Yet, despite this seeming prominence, the white shirt is felt more than it is seen, more like the aide-de-camp, whom we have learnt to overlook, like some sort of a faint shadow of the president cast on a grey background.

That is what conservative dressing does to the white shirt, never mind that without the shirt, the whole look collapses.

It is like celebrating astronauts without giving credit to mission control.

Mad Men might have made the formal rigour of the white shirt look sexy, but it is the total disregard traditional stereotypes that puts the “oo” in the white shirt’s liberating “mph.”

A fitted white shirt with quality denims and pair of brown brogues or loafers, is the kind of stylish mish-mash that brings the white shirt out of the shadows as a distinct piece of clothing and not just an accompaniment, even if an unadjusted eye might think that half of you is from a law firm and the other from weekend getaway!

Gor Mahia’ coach Frank Nuttall is among those who has been able to pull this look so well and can hold his own against trendy Pep Guardiola, whose short-sleeved white shirts is classic case of pushing the envelope.

If ever there was a thing like bipolar style, then the closely cut white shirt with casual pants or denim, complemented with feet shoved in Masons, Clarks, Teveos, canvasses or sneakers, is it.

The whiteness of the shirt does not have to be as blindly prominent as a Nerea shoot, even though to their credit, Sauti Sol have often pulled great formal and dressed down looks with white shirts.

It is all in the details. Basic details, which, as the likes of John Varvatos, the celebrated menswear designer observed, do not change.

After all, a shirt may be cut slimmer or looser, a suit darker or lighter and sneakers might have laces or not, but at the end of it all, it is just about shirts, suits and sneakers.

Twitter: @omondipaul