Gustav Klimt the Virgin (Maiden) 1913 Sketch T-Shirt

Before the gold and the flowers, there was the pencil. Klimt drew hundreds of studies for The Virgin, the 1913 painting of women tangled together in sleep, each one a different age, the whole thing a life told in one bed. The finished canvas is a riot of colour. The sketch is the opposite: a few lines, a figure, the drawing of a man who’d already decided everything and was just checking.

This tee is the sketch. Quiet, a little strange, and the kind of thing people lean in to look at before they ask what it is. Tell them, or don’t.

Daddy wears it when he wants to be the most interesting man in the room without raising his voice — meeting someone’s parents, a gallery opening, dinner where he doesn’t know the host. White oxford, the Gucci loafers, done.

The shirt itself is the good kind of basic: combed ring-spun cotton, preshrunk, side-seamed so it hangs straight, taped shoulders so the collar doesn’t twist after the fortieth wash. It fits like the tee you’ve had for ten years, on day one.

How to wear it

Under a white oxford or a navy blazer, with dark jeans and loafers. This is the dinner tee. Leave the sneakers for the Banksys.