admin What do an ice cold glass of water, central air, and a really good linen shirt have in common? They all keep you cool when temperatures outside are so high the weather feels near-uninhabitable. We’ve waxed poetic about the benefits of linen before—from linen button-ups that can withstand hours under the unrelenting sun to linen pants that keep your legs from melting mid-commute—but the current record-breaking heat merits a reminder: these days, a flax-derived shirt doesn’t feel like a “nice-to-have” as much as it does a bona fide necessity—and Alex Crane’s version is the best I’ve found.
As far as details go, the Playa shirt skews classic—straight fit, Brazilian corozo buttons, single chest pocket. It’s crafted from sustainably-sourced French linen that’s pre-softened to avoid the fabric’s break-in period, a signature of Alex Crane’s linen-heavy repertoire. (Linen can start off rough, but it softens over time the more you wear it.) The snow white option might be the most obviously versatile, but the shirt also comes in an expansive range of colors, from an electric blue to a burnt rust, all dyed in organic, GOTS-certified pigments.
Aesthetically speaking, it’s the exaggerated hem and sleeves that lend the Playa its X factor. The former allows the shirt to look neat tucked in or draped over your lower half with no weird bunching at the waist, while the latter are easy to roll up without cutting off circulation. The Playa was cut to look relaxed however you style it, which is kind of the draw of linen in general; you wear the fabric so you don’t have to worry about sacrificing form for function, no matter how fast your glasses fog up when you exit the climate-controlled confines of your home.
All of which sounds great on paper, but is kind of secondary to the ultimate mark of a linen shirt’s worth: how it feels on your body. As someone who tends to run hot, I’m constantly looking for clothes that keep me cool without resorting to athleisure-y tanks and nylon shorts. When I first got my hands on the Playa shirt I found it soft (though not as soft as pre-washed cotton) and sturdy. I could tell it would hold up over several washes, but that same substantial construction also gave me pause: would it, somehow, be too weighty to wear during the summer?
What I’ve found, though, wearing this shirt over a cotton skirt while working from home or tucked into broken-in chinos at happy hour, is the opposite—it’s kept me comfortably sweat-free and buffered from the unrelenting heat. Linen doesn’t offer the quite same UV-protection as, say, hemp, but the looser weave Alex Crane employs made me feel appropriately covered and not like I was a sitting duck caught in the sun’s punishing crosshairs.
After washing it, it didn’t wrinkle, and the fabric integrity felt as strong as before. (As with all linen garments, you should skip the dryer and wash on a cool setting—I washed mine on hot and noticed a little shrinkage, but I chalk that up to user error.) Which is to say, if you follow the instructions on the care label, your shirt should stay true-to-size weeks, months—even years—down the road. Which, funnily enough, is exactly how long you’ll be wearing it. The perfect linen shirt does exist, and in my book, the flaxheads at Alex Crane cracked the code.
