--- title: In Defense of That J-Crew Gingham Shirt description: Listen up, folks: That blue checkered J-Crew gingham style shirt everyone's making fun of today? Stop it. That shirt is wonderful. canonical: https://time.com/3159706/j-crew-gingham-shirt/ author: Alex Fitzpatrick article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-22T15:01:31.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:55:52.258Z og:title: In Defense of That J-Crew Gingham Shirt og:description: Listen up, folks: That blue checkered J-Crew gingham style shirt everyone's making fun of today? Stop it. That shirt is wonderful. og:url: https://time.com/3159706/j-crew-gingham-shirt/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: In Defense of That J-Crew Gingham Shirt twitter:description: Listen up, folks: That blue checkered J-Crew gingham style shirt everyone's making fun of today? Stop it. That shirt is wonderful. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # In Defense of That J-Crew Gingham Shirt > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Alex Fitzpatrick](https://time.com/author/alex-fitzpatrick/)  ## Alex Fitzpatrick Aug 22, 2014 3:01 PM UTC  by [Alex Fitzpatrick](https://time.com/author/alex-fitzpatrick/)  ## Alex Fitzpatrick Aug 22, 2014 3:01 PM UTC **Updated 12:05 p.m. ET** Listen up, folks: That blue checkered J-Crew gingham style shirt [everyone’s making fun of today](http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/j-crew-gingham-shirt-instagram)? Stop it. That shirt is _wonderful._ The frock-mockery started with an [Instagram account](http://instagram.com/thatjcrewginghamshirt) that’s posting images of various men (and women, and even babies) wearing the very same J-Crew shirt. There’s often something on Instagram or Tumblr that people are making fun of, from men who sit with their [legs too wide on the subway](http://mentakingup2muchspaceonthetrain.tumblr.com/) to guys[ who hate shopping](http://instagram.com/miserable%5Fmen). This new one’s admittedly pretty funny on first glance: Hey, look at all these dudes wearing the same shirt! Here’s the thing: yeah, that shirt’s popular. And yeah, I own one! But there’s a good reason for that: It’s a pretty classic American shirt great for all occasions, it almost never goes out of style and it’s super easy to pull out of my closet and match with a whole bunch of different pants and shoes so I look decent with minimal effort, which is really the apex of men’s fashion for me and probably lots of other dudes (It’s all about efficiency.) So the shirt is _fine,_ folks. But fashion issues aside, there’s another problem with this Instagram page — it’s totally a form of cyberbullying. It seems like whoever’s running the account is either taking creepshots of men wearing a gingham shirt while unaware their photo is being taken or grabbing such images from elsewhere on Instagram or the wider web. Either way, this isn’t cool — because while it may be all in good fun to whoever’s running the account, the page isn’t laughing _with_ the men rocking the gingham shirts, it’s laughing _at_ them. And nobody, whether man, woman or adorable tiny baby, deserves to be Insta-shamed about their wardrobe. **Update:** Taylor Lorenz over at the _Daily Mail_ [interviewed](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2731293/Does-man-shirt-closet-New-Instagram-account-pays-tribute-THAT-J-Crew-gingham-favorite.html) the creator of the Instagram account, who seems to be doing it less as an insult and more of a tribute to this fine piece of apparel. 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