Real stories · The shirt that retired the checks

The Shirt That Retired The Check Shirts

One black denim shirt has quietly done what twenty years of my hinting could not: Malcolm's beloved old check shirts are finally resting at the back of the wardrobe.

Every wife of a certain vintage knows the uniform. Malcolm has worn roughly the same check shirt since 2004 — different checks, same shirt — and any suggestion of a change has been met with the look he otherwise reserves for people who talk during the cricket. Clothes, in his view, are a solved problem.

So I didn't consult him. I ordered the Corvialen from York Boutique — a British label I buy from often — in black: a proper denim shirt with chest pockets and neat stitching, cut tidier than his old shirts but with room to actually move. It's a soft denim blend rather than the stiff workwear sort, which is why he kept it on past the obligatory try-on — it feels like a shirt he's already owned for years, while looking like a man who's made an effort.

He wears it open over a t-shirt at the weekend and buttoned with the collar open when we're out for lunch, and both ways he looks — I'll say it plainly — ten years younger. The black goes with every pair of trousers he owns, and it comes out of the wash looking exactly as it went in, which for a man who refuses to iron matters a great deal.

Our granddaughter's verdict, unprompted: 'Grandad looks cool.' Malcolm has worn it four days running since.

I'll be honest: I paused at the price, because Malcolm notices receipts the way he notices draughts. But it's listed at £80 and sells for £39.95 because York Boutique sell direct — and I did check before ordering that I could send it back if he refused to wear it. You can, within a fortnight, and the delivery's free. It has not been off his back long enough to send anywhere.

It comes in black, deep blue and blue, in sizes S to 3XL. If there's a man in your house whose shirts remember the Blair years: this is how you retire them without a committee meeting.