Style

For Men, It's the Summer of the ‘BBQ Shirt.’ So What Is It, Exactly?

Whether you call them "camp shirts," "aloha shirts," or even "bowling shirts," these colorful, comfortable, short-sleeve button-ups are appearing at backyard barbecues all over the U.S. this summer.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, Benicio Del Toro, Johnny Depp, 1998Photographer: Universal/Courtesy Everett Col

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By Troy Patterson

July 6, 2017 at 4:05 PM UTC

In the department of obscure anniversaries, it has been 60 years since the demise of Gentry, an excellent magazine that used to inform men about clothes, sports, food, wine, chess openings, and Oldsmobile coupes with white-walled tires. I strongly recommend The Gentry Man: A Guide for the Civilized Male (Harper Design), a softcover book assembling its greatest hits, and this summer I especially suggest turning to page 98, given the epidemic riots of color bursting across men’s torsos on evenings and weekends.

Here, Gentry’s editors pay tribute to a casual shirt designed as a “conversation piece … especially for the outdoor chef.” This “barbecue shirt” from Damon Creations was fashioned from cotton and finished to look “exactly like freshly wiped oilcloth.” Droll but dignified, its grill-themed pattern includes a set of Cubist-inspired cooking tools (turner, tongs, grill brush …) and a soft-Surrealist trout.