Note: this item was sent free of charge for review.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical of this shirt when Fisher + Baker reached out to see if we would be interested in looking at their clothing. All of it looks very nice, but cashmere + polyester — can that be better than some of the merino wool we normally test and wear? Why not though, learn something new every day. The pitch for this shirt is simple: “You deserve to wear cashmere, Everyday.”

Sounded fancy, so I’m in.

Materials

This shirt actually has a really interesting blend: 88% drirelease® Polyester and 12% Cashmere Wool. I have experience with both fabrics on their own, but never together. The combination of both makes the entire unit machine washable as well.

The entire shirt is luxuriously soft.

And I don’t mean that in a ‘soft for wool’ way. I mean it is soft. The hand feel is soft. Against your skin, soft. Against your face, soft. It feels like a soft cashmere blended with your most washed and loved cotton t-shirt — and yeah it feels great. It’s a heavy material, I would peg it around 170+gsm but not more than 200gsm. It’s thick so there is a nice drape and a substantial feel to it.

Performance

Ok, Fisher + Baker claims:

• Fast Drying: I would say it is faster than cotton by a large margin, but not quite as fast as thinner fully synthetic or merino wool shirts. I have no complaints, it will dry overnight without issue.
• Breathable: I thought this would fail on this front, but it doesn’t. It’s not the most breathable shirt I own, but it’s on par with most of my merino wool t-shirts and did decently in heat where the “feels like” was spiking to 105°F. Again, on par with merino wool — which is to say: well done.
• Odor Control: better than cotton, but not as good as pure merino wool. You can get a couple days out of it, but it’s not the most odor resistant. This does bring up one other small odor related thing: this shirt smells funky when you pull it from the washer. Very wet-wool smell. This goes away quickly as the shirt dries, but do note this.
• Easy to Care For: So, they say machine washable. They sent it to me to test, and as part of the packaging it came with some wool detergent. Seems like they would prefer you use wool detergent. But I wouldn’t know because I don’t read instructions well and Steve didn’t tell me not to do harmful things to the shirt, so I just washed it with all my other stuff in normal detergent. I hang dry all my shirts already, and I did the same here. The shirt survived it all, and it should, as drirelease has been very durable with my other shirts made from it. I didn’t detect any shrink or outright damage. I’ve washed it nearly 8 times now, and all I can see is minor fuzziness on the fabric. So, check.

To sum up the performance of this shirt, I would peg it at: above average. If you wash your clothing daily to begin with, you’ll find the performance great, but if you want the most wears out of your t-shirts then you could find more odor resistant options. Generally it performed far better than I expected and in line with the claims.

Fit and Style

I normally write this before the performance section, but thought it was best after. Because there are two aspect to this shirt: first it looks stellar. Second it is cut really well, and also cut in a way where it moves well too.

I tend to find most t-shirts either a little boxy, or a little to form fitting. Fisher + Baker really nailed this cut. There’s not annoying rub from any seams, they aren’t in the way of even shoulder straps, and the entire shirt just fits me very well.

As for style, it’s a t-shirt. A nice t-shirt, but still a t-shirt.

Overall

When I wrote up the review about Outlier’s Ultrafine Merino T, I ended it by saying “these are the most luxurious feeling shirts I’ve ever owned.” That statement is now obsolete. Those are the best merino shirts I have ever seen.

But the Fisher + Baker Everyday Cashmere Short Sleeve Crew is easily the most luxurious feeling shirts I’ve ever owned, while still performing well. At $98, yeah, these should be top of your list.

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