Outlier Pivot Sleeve Shirt

Having consistently brought an all new dynamic to functional and fashionable contemporary menswear, Outlier has changed things up yet again with their Pivot Sleeve Shirt. The classic buttondown shirt has been re-created with a special pivot sleeve construction which allows for unparalleled motion and comfort. The shirts feature 2-ply Italian spun Egyptian cotton with manufacturing done in Newark, New Jersey via Gambert Shirt Corp. The shirts are available now through Outlier with a retail price of $120 USD.

Photography: Emiliano Granado

Introducing Outlier’s Pivot Sleeve Shirt, the classic buttondown shirt, re-engineered for 21st century movement. It began life as a dress shirt cut for urban cyclists, but the result is simply an overall better men’s shirt. The patent pending pivot sleeve opens the arms up to a full range of motion, while eliminating the stress points and excess fabric that plague contemporary dress shirts. A lean active form counterbalanced with traditional single needle tailoring and two-ply Italian spun Egyptian cotton. Manufactured locally in Newark New Jersey with superb craftsmanship by the Gambert Shirt Corp.

This is quite simply a better men’s dress shirt. We started out with a basic task, how could we make a shirt that moved better on a cyclists body, but we wound up with something a bit more subtle. A buttondown shirt cut to fit the body better and open up a range of motion constrained by traditional shirt construction. An experiment in form, the Outlier Pivot Sleeve Shirt.

The basic challenge was straightforward, when you lean forward on a bike a buttondown shirt stresses. It pulls uncomfortably taut across the shoulders. The sleeves pull up exposing your wrists to the cold, and the tails pull out of your pants, leaving you either untucked or with a blooming blouse of a shirt. Our solution is the patent-pending Pivot Sleeve, a completely reconstructed buttondown that retains the traditional look and feel of a dress shirt while working equally well both on and off the a bicycle.

From the front it looks like a well cut dress shirt. Like a good stage show, the magic takes place in back unseen by most. The underside of the pivot sleeve flows seamlessly into the back of the garment, creating an extra side panel. By removing the rear arm seam you can move your arm forward without restriction. It opens up a whole range of arm motion, move your arms forward or up and your shirt stays in place, cuff at the wrist, no cutting at the shoulders, your shirt tucked in properly. The extra side panel created by the pivot sleeve gives the shirt a strong form, the extra fluff found in most modern dress shirts is gone, this is how a shirt should fit.

To manufacture the shirts we left the friendly confines of Manhattan’s garment district and headed across the river to the Gambert Shirt Corp, in Newark, New Jersey. This family owned company has been making nothing but dress shirts for over 75 years and they are true masters of the craft. Single needle tailoring throughout, 16 stiches per inch, cross and lock stitched buttons and an all over fine finish.

We stayed classic with the fabric as well, a two-ply Egyptian cotton spun and woven in Italy. If you expected some sort of tech fabric from us, well we hunted, and still are hunting, but so far we’ve yet to see a technical shirting fabric with a nice enough handle, so we went with quality and tradition and the result is a great shirt.

We like the finished product so much it’s easy to forget that this is was conceived as an Outlier Experimental release. But we are still experimenting, this is the beta version and there is more to come. This release is priced at $120 a shirt, and available in white, light blue and a light lavender.