M.C. Escher Sky and Water I T-Shirt

A woodcut from 1938 in which a row of fish at the bottom of the frame becomes, by degrees and without any moment you can point to, a row of birds at the top.

Escher was a mathematician who happened to draw, and this is the print where the trick is cleanest: the fish and the birds are the same shapes, interlocking, each one carving the other out of the white space. Look at the middle row and you cannot decide what you are looking at. That is not a failure of the drawing. That is the drawing.

Daddy wears this one to things where he expects to have to talk to strangers. It does the opening for him.

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

White oxford open over it, dark jeans, clean sneakers. The graphic is busy; let everything else be quiet.