People ask us fairly often where the shirts come from. It is a fair question, and the answer says a lot about what you are buying.
Through collectors, not warehouses
Almost everything we offer comes through collectors and personal contacts. We do not buy job lots or bulk stock. Shirts reach us because someone who owned and cared for them decided it was time to let them go, and thought of us.
That matters more than it might sound. A shirt that has sat in a collection has usually been stored properly, worn rarely if at all, and comes with someone who can tell you where it came from. A shirt pulled from an anonymous bulk lot comes with nothing.
Why contacts beat marketplaces
Building this network takes years and it cannot be shortcut. You meet people at fairs, you talk, you buy something small, you deal honestly, and slowly you become someone that other collectors trust.
The payoff is that the good pieces are offered to us before they go anywhere public. The shirts most worth owning rarely make it to an open listing, because someone who knows what they have would rather sell it to a person who understands it.
Match worn: a different standard
For match worn shirts we are stricter, because the value sits entirely in the history. We want to know who had the shirt, how they got it, and what documentation exists.
If that chain cannot be established, we pass. A shirt sold as match worn without a traceable history is not worth the risk, for us or for whoever would buy it next.
What we turn down
A lot, in practice. We pass on reproductions, on damage that could not be described honestly, and on anything where the story does not hold up when you ask a second question.
We also pass on shirts that are simply ordinary. There is a large market in mass produced shirts from big clubs, and we would rather not compete in it. It is not what we find interesting, and it is not why people come to us.
Honesty as a policy
Every flaw gets photographed and stated. Every later addition, such as a number applied after production, gets mentioned. If a shirt has been repaired, we say so, and every shirt lists its measurements so you are never guessing about fit.
Vintage shirts are old garments and almost none of them are perfect. Pretending otherwise only leads to a disappointed buyer, and in a community this small that is not a mistake worth making twice.
See what made the cut in the full collection, or take a look at the pieces we kept for ourselves in the Shirt Société Archive.