I hate to break it to you, but these intensely hot, endlessly sweaty summers are going to get worse before they get better. Temperatures rising at a steady clip each year means that, in order to avoid feeling disgusting every June to August for the rest of your life, you need to be prepared. For me, luckily, the best move is also an incredibly simple one. During the particularly nasty heat waves, you should be bringing a second shirt wherever you go.
For those of us who have moved to a big city—especially on the Eastern Seaboard, where humidity puts up Barry Bonds–type numbers each summer—each journey out of the house seems to guarantee getting drenched in sweat. It is as humbling as it is embarrassing, so much so that sometimes you just want to stay in and soak up your in-home AC, rather than be subjected to the cruel whims of the environment. But you can’t do that every day. There are offices to commute to, functions to attend, and sticky outdoor dinners that await.
(I understand that this is a much lesser problem for people living car-based lives. The five-second stroll from your front door to the car is hopefully not enough to make you sweat through a whole shirt. But even so, it’s possible your next destination may be outdoors. If you don’t want to show up to dinner damp, you too should heed this advice.)
The process here is quite elementary. When getting dressed at home, opt for some shirt that you don’t really care about. It could be a simple white T-shirt that you own five exact copies of, whichever member of your beloved vintage tee collection is already a little worn and ratty, or a breezy linen that serves function over fashion. Either way, it’s going in the laundry as soon as you return home. This is your sacrificial lamb, a spiritual cousin to the Jersey Shore T-shirt time ritual of wearing a pregame shirt before the going-out shirt.
Then, before you officially step out, select the shirt that you actually want to be wearing when you get to the office, bar, movie theater, whatever. If you want to avoid the summer trap of wearing a T-shirt everywhere you go, we’ve got some recommendations for seersucker and linen button-ups that will optimize your sweat wicking and still keep you stylish. Fold it up as nicely as you can and stuff it in your bag. You can even throw a stick of antiperspirant deodorant, some cologne, wipes, or a small towel in there too. Whenever you finally arrive, duck into the bathroom and change into the clean, unsullied shirt. Feel free to splash some cold water on your face. If the situation calls for it, wipe the pools of sweat with your handy-dandy wipe and/or towel and hit your torso with the deodorant-and-cologne combo. (Be sure not to overapply. No one should smell you from 10 feet away.) Now, for the rest of the night, you’re enjoying yourself sans pit stains, funky body odor, or visible discomfort.
I will admit, this method can create some complications. If you’re going to a place that doesn’t have an easily accessible bathroom—this one tends to rear its ugly head at public parks—you may have to get creative. If the establishment you’re going to does have a bathroom but you don’t want to walk in, greet everybody, and then explain that you’re going to change clothes in a tiny bathroom stall, I’d advise you to purposefully get there early. That way, nobody is the wiser.
This move can be especially helpful if you’re headed to a first date in the summer. My honest advice there would be to take a car no matter what, whether it’s your own, a rideshare, or a really generous friend’s. Ruining a first date before it even starts because you had to stand in a blistering inferno waiting for public transit, shlep six blocks to meet them, and show up in a puddle of your own sweat is definitely not the move. If you continue seeing that person and building chemistry, though, you don’t need to hide the second shirt thing. There is no shame in strategic sweat management. And if your romantic interest can hang, the two-shirt strategy could even become a charming little bit between the two of you.
Lastly, if you’re going to put this strategy to use at work, and you have access to multiple floors within your building, head straight for the bathroom on one of those floors and execute the wardrobe change there. (If you are doing particularly well, and your job comes with its own office, you can also keep an emergency stash of shirts there like Don Draper.)
No matter how you go about maintaining a social life when the streets are hot enough to fry an egg on them, it doesn’t hurt to bring the extra shirt with you. Should you chicken out of actually doing the shirt change, find yourself unable to locate an appropriate place to do it, or perhaps the sun gods went easy on you and the sweat levels turned out to be minimal, then you just have a shirt in your bag. That’s not the end of the world at all! In fact, depending on how close you are with the people you’re hanging with, it can be a fun little conversation starter. I brought this other shirt with me in case I showed up looking like James Brown, but the dew point was actually pretty low today! Isn’t it gorgeous out? We should definitely get a bottle of orange wine to celebrate.
The main takeaway here is to have a plan. Summer constitutes one-fourth of our lives, and when the mere thought of going outside zaps your energy, it’s important to get out and socialize. You can’t let the weather win, and the best defense is a good offense. You are going to sweat, and that’s fine! It’s a natural, essential bodily function that is trying to cool you down, it just does so in a way that leaves you feeling a bit gross. You can never fully prevent it, but you can treat it.
Start with the basics—showering (maybe even twice a day), liberally applying deodorant, and wearing breathable fabrics—and then supplement your attack with the reinforcement of a second shirt. Trust me: It’ll all pay off when you pull up to the barbecue feeling fresh, clean, and literally comfortable in your own skin. You may even get some internal validation from being the driest person there.