Wear It Anywhere: The Capital Tee

Luxe-T is a high-end brand for those wanting an extra kick from their plain white tee. One 14-year-old, Dominiqe Thompson of the District, even claims to have his $12 Luxe-Ts dry-cleaned so they "don't lose their shape."

Luxe-T is based in Fairfax, but the shirts are all made in Vietnam and Korea, probably for pennies apiece. The Luxe-T is woven from combed cotton yarns, then dyed with ciba -- "one of the best dyes in the world," boasts a company rep, Steven Kim. The business, which started in 2001 and grew by word of mouth, earned $6.8 million last year; 300,000 tees were sold last summer, sizes large to 6XL. * * *

Do boys wearing the gigantic white tee, trying to appear as men, realize that when sleeves and tail-ends flap vigorously in a strong wind, they just might resemble angels from a hip-hop Christmas pageant?

When grown men wear it, untucked, the implications are a bit more complex: In a bus rumbling down Georgia Avenue are two men sitting in adjacent rows, each resting his head on a rain-speckled window, each wearing a big white T-shirt on a weekday. They may be headed to work, hard labor involving motor oil or sawdust. Or they may be out of work.

Warm-weather weekends are a breezier matter, when white-teed men feel allowed to act as boys. On Largo's Boulevard of the Capital Centre recently, a slow parade of cars winds along the outdoor mall. Here comes a black SUV, full of dudes in white tees, bobbing heads, creeping down the lane with door-rattling bass in a staccato drone. It stops after spotting two women in their early thirties, shoulders bared, sipping drinks alfresco at a fast-food Mexican grill.

The men, forgoing the slow head nod, decide to wave.

('Cause I'm fresh in my white tee / They glance at my white tee / And I got the hat that match my pants and my white tee , brag Dem Franchize Boyz. )

The women, Nyree Thompson and Sheryl Nichols, briefly eye each other. They return to their drinks. It wasn't so much the white tees that turned them off, but the waving out the window. Sheryl, in fact, likes the clean look of a white T-shirt. Nyree, a bit pickier, appreciates a man who can dress up and not try to flirt while wearing that .

"They can be coming from the gym or playing basketball," Nichols says defensively.

"And they didn't go home and shower?"

"So you like that guy?" Nichols asks. (A blur of yellow plaid walks by.) They laugh. Look, says Thompson, the thing about white tees is that "you don't need to be getting them in the Big & Tall if you're a medium."

"So if we see someone cute with the white tee, then you leave him for me," says Nichols.

"And he'll be coming to your house every day with a big white tee," snaps Thompson.

The white T-shirt as A-game apparel might be too much to ask of what, essentially, is a substitute off the bench. When guys wear the white tee to a nightclub, for example, "that's not creative to me," says Nateace Watson, 23, a Foot Locker assistant manager in Silver Spring. "I don't pay attention to those fools."

And so she doesn't. And the cops and the principals may not like those boys wearing all those big white tees, but some nights, on the sidewalks, we see a flock of innocents ready to be tucked into bed.

I hit the mall in the white tee, the song goes. Oooh, I think they like me.