There are 3 major types of men’s underwear – boxers, briefs, and boxer briefs. At a fundamental level – what makes a boxer a boxer and a brief a brief etc. – the differences are in form and texture (and these two are clearly related). But ISTM that there are also differences in coloring, which have no apparent rationale that I can see.
Boxers tend to be multicolored, frequently a plaid, or sometimes a print pattern. Briefs are most commonly white, though sometimes colored, but almost always a solid color. Boxer briefs are virtually always colored but unicolor – I don’t recall ever seeing a white or multicolored boxer brief.
It may be that briefs have too little fabric to really make a pattern stand out; or that people who wear briefs tend to be a little more conservative. I don’t believe that’s necessarily true but Happy Shopping. Saxx.
It seems to be a new thing for boxer briefs not to be available in white. I’ve been wearing them for a decade or more and always bought white ones but in the last couple of years had a hard time finding them in white. The ones I’m now wearing are white Calvin Klein boxer briefs I found at Macy’s and the next batch are going to be white Hanes boxer briefs I bought on Amazon.com.
I generally wear boxers - white only. I wouldn’t mind solid colors, say for example, blue, but the plain cotton ones seem to only come in white or obnoxious plaids. You can get knit boxers in solid colors but I just want plain cotton.
Boxers are the only style that I’ve seen that have “fun” ones. Stars & stripes in stores now, bats & pumpkins in Oct, snowmen, reindeer & Santas, in Dec, hearts & lips in Feb, etc.; plus all of the cartoon & beer ones sold year round.
With the rare exception of a basic stripe, I have never seen patterned, seasonal, or ‘fun’ briefs.
Women’s panties, with less material than men’s briefs have patterns or sayings on them.
Scrolling through men’s underwear on Amazon I’m not seeing all the patterns the OP is.
As for why there are differences, I expect it’s due to consumer demand. I’m sure there has been the occasional attempt to mix it up and they’ve discovered that the people who buy briefs aren’t interested enough in patterns to make that option pay. Whereas the boxer and boxer brief buyers are less stodgy.
FreshPair This one keeps taking me to the main page, instead of the sort. But if you go to mens -> briefs -> and then hit the multi-color button, you will find a plethora of colors and patterns.
I call BS on that hypothesis. Boxers vs. briefs has to do with whether you want the boys swinging or not; totally separate from wanting a pattern on the material
Look at all of these small, repeating patterns that Old Navy sells; there’s no reason those patterns wouldn’t work on a pair of briefs.
a) You’ve ignored the definition of terms for the discussion as set forth in the OP. We’re talking boxers, briefs and boxer briefs. So the choice of briefs rather than boxer briefs means you specifically want no leg what so ever on your underwear. And you can choose “boxers” (boxer briefs) and still keep things tight.
b) Even if we were ignoring boxer briefs for some weird reason, there is nothing inherently absurd in a correlation between wanting room and loving patterns.
c) You link to Old Navy, which doesn’t even have non-boxer briefs on their webpage, clearly showing that it’s a segment of shoppers they’ve chosen not to prioritize, adding to the evidence that there are significant differences between these market segments.
Where do boxer briefs fall? But seriously, it’s entirely possible that the users of briefs prefer white or solid colors and those who use boxers prefer patterns. Maybe brief users tend to be those of a certain age who coincidentally prefer briefs and solid colors ( because that was what was available when they were young ) while boxer wearers prefer patterns or non-white solids because they aren’t wearing boxers because they want the boys swinging- they wear boxers so they can dispense with pants and white is too revealing. Color and style preferences don’t have to be completely unrelated.
I don’t think white briefs are as common as they used to be. I’ve worn briefs almost exclusively all my life, but haven’t had white ones in decades. Usually black or dark grey, but sometimes I’ll get some blue or red ones. The white seem to be relegated to the bottom rack in most stores these days.
I concur that they’re usually solid in color, though a few years back somebody came out with a striped model (Hanes, I think), and I had a bunch of those for a while.