Bigfoot? Loch Ness Monster? NO! It's an LT-sized, plain pocketless cotton T-shirt!

It’s uncanny, they are like will-o-the wisps, like UFOs. Something about the combination of this style and size of T-Shirt ensures that it will disappear from the catalog of any store approximately a year after I start buying them there. The latest victim was JC Penney, which until this fall offered a sturdy, humble cotton T-shirt, sans decoration, sans pocket, in a modest range of colors from St. John’s Bay. Now they are gone, and I have to go find another store that offers this type of shirt, and I’m frankly getting tired of playing this game every year or so.

I honestly don’t think that my criteria are all that outrageous. I can’t help it: I am an oddly shaped person, with a midsection that is extra-stretched out, somehow.
Regular T-shirts don’t fit me well, yet the XL sizes are too wide and hang on me like a tent. I need a T-shirt that is a bit longer than normal, to cover up my weirdly elongated carcass. The Large Tall size category works fine for me.

If that were all there were to it, I guess things would be simpler for me, but I have two additional insanities that complicate matters. I don’t like having a pocket on my T-shirt. I don’t ever use it, and I don’t like it. It annoys me. Ditto for any sort of decoration, trademark emblem or sports logo on my shirts. These huge corporations aren’t paying me to advertise for them, and I don’t feel the need to wear clothing with unfunny catchphrases to draw attention to myself.

So, in summary: T-Shirts in LT size–can sometimes be found at the Big and Tall Men’s shops, provided you don’t mind pockets or sports logos. Note to the Big and Tall stores: XL isn’t really an ideal substitute for LT.

T-Shirts without pockets–they’re everywhere, but they all have logos or stupid sayings on them.

T-Shirts without logos or stupid sayings–very common. But they all have pockets.

Why is it that a straightforward, ordinary, no-pocket solid color T-shirt is almost impossible to attain, to say nothing of finding one in an unusual size like LT? What was the problem, St. John’s Bay? Was there really so much demand for the T-shirts with pockets, or in the cheesy faux-'70’s two-color style that you are offering now, that you just couldn’t afford to keep the plain old solid color T-shirts on your product line? Well, you and your JC Penney overlords can just go ahead and bite me.

Anyway…in conclusion, if during the post-holiday sale season, anyone happens to notice a store offering some nice plain, solid color cotton T-shirts (size LT), could you take a second to post the information here, please. I’d be extremely appreciative. Thank you.

How about Eddie Bauer? A little pricey for a plain ol’ t-shirt, but at least they have them.

I had a similar complaint. In winter I like long-sleeved T-shirts as undershirts. I want them stout, white, without a pocket or writing. Good Luck. At least I wasn;t looking for an odd size.

I did a bunch of Googling, dead-end chasing & finally found what I wanted: http://twistedtoad.com/CasualApparel/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=48

You might do some hunting around on this site. I spent maybe a minute looking for conventional colored blank T-shirts for you and they seemed to have at least a few possibliities.

The magic search word is “blank”; that’s what the apparel industry calls something without printing on it. You’ll end up finding silk-screen supply companies that sell to T-shirt stores. They’ll often sell to you as well.

Or go down to the local novelty T-shirt emporium and ask about buying shirts without the crap-comics ironed onto them. After all, the store buys them plain.

http://www.americanapparelstore.com/men-t-shirts.html

they are all made in the us, and since they function as a supplier to people who screen print their shirts, they will never go away.

It’s just a suggestion, but have you contacted the manufacturer or the JC Penny chain? Sometimes they can be helpful and recommend a substitute or point you to the clearance rack or help in some way. Maybe they just need to know there are people out there who really wanted that specific item. It’s a 50/50 whether it will help, but you just never know.

Good luck.

I just wanted to sympathize. I share your frustration! I’m the sort of person who doesn’t go to the store until I have decided on exactly what the criteria are on the product I need. And the instant I make that decision, all corresponding products vanish from the earth! (or at least from any store close to me.)

It happened a few days ago, when a pair of my work shoes just flat out died and I had a single day to shop in Ocala, Florida. I visited at least twelve shoe stores before finding a pair I could bring myself to settle for. All I wanted was a freakin’ pair of beige pumps! I was under a mistaken impression that beige pumps were a basic shoe to be found everywhere, but NOOOOOOOO! The pair I finally bought were overly clunky and didn’t quite fit, but I was heartily tired of the quest by that point.

Good to know the universe hasn’t singled me out to suffer the curse of Can’t-Find-the-Simplest-Fucking-Thing.

I came to the conclusion long ago that the retailers use the word tall in the description because ‘Big & Round Men’s Store’ doesn’t sound right.

In conclusion: George Forman may be a good spokesman, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t wear tall sizes.