Henri Matisse Apollinaire Three Heads to Friendship 1952 T-Shirt

Three heads, turned toward one another, drawn in 1952 in the reduced line Matisse arrived at near the end and named for the poet Guillaume Apollinaire.

It is a drawing about friendship made by a man in his eighties, and the economy is the whole content — a face here is four or five strokes, and removing one more would destroy it. Apollinaire had been dead thirty-four years by then. He died in the influenza pandemic of 1918, two days before the Armistice, at thirty-eight, having spent his short life arguing for exactly the kind of art Matisse was still making.

Daddy reads this as the most sentimental thing in the edit, and wears it accordingly — to see people he actually likes.

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

On its own with good trousers, or under an unbuttoned oxford. Understated on purpose; do not fight it.