The Best Boxer Briefs You Can Actually Buy
Six boxer briefs worth owning, from German cotton that outlasts your trousers to a cheap synthetic that is genuinely good. Each with its honest weakness.
Five Briefs Worth the Money
Zimmerli, Hanro, Schiesser, Sunspel and Le Slip Francais: the best premium men's briefs, what the money actually buys you, and when it is not worth spending.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through one we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what we recommend. More on how this works.
There is a point in most men's lives when the multipack stops being enough. Usually it arrives about a fortnight after switching to briefs properly, when you notice that the good pair in the drawer is doing something the other five are not, and you start wondering what happens further up the price list.
Quite a lot happens, as it turns out. Underwear is a category where the money goes into things you can feel: the cotton, the knit, the elastic, and the number of washes before any of it gives up. Here are five makers who earn it, and one honest note about when they do not.
Zimmerli of Switzerland
The most expensive underwear in the world, and reasonably relaxed about telling you so. Founded in 1871 in Aarburg by a woman named Pauline Zimmerli-Bäurlin, who started with a hand knitting machine and ended up dressing most of Europe's better dressed wardrobes. The house works in extremely fine two-ply cottons, and the classic lines are knitted and finished at a level that makes a normal brief feel like a dishcloth.
You are paying for cotton quality and hand finishing. A single pair costs what a multipack of decent ones does, and lasts long enough to make the comparison uncomfortable. Whether that arithmetic actually works out in a drawer rather than on paper is the fairest question anyone asks about the house. Is Zimmerli Actually Worth It?
Hanro
Founded in 1884 in Liestal, and the sensible person's Swiss option. Hanro's cotton briefs are famous for a soft, dense, almost weightless jersey and a waistband that stays put for years without turning into a rope. Comfortably the most common answer when you ask a man who has tried everything what he actually wears on a Tuesday.
Schiesser
The German answer, in production since 1875 in Radolfzell, and the maker of the fine rib cotton that half of central Europe grew up in. Fine rib is a proper piece of textile engineering: the vertical rib gives natural stretch and recovery without loading the fabric with elastane, so it holds its shape, breathes properly and keeps looking like itself after a hundred washes.
The prices are not extravagant either, which makes this the best value entry on the list and the easiest first step out of the multipack. Six Briefs That Built the Modern World
Sunspel
Nottingham, 1860, and the English contribution to the argument. Sunspel built its reputation on exceptionally fine long staple cotton and a lightness that feels closer to silk than to a t-shirt. If the Swiss options feel too formal and the German ones too engineered, this is the one that simply feels lovely and looks discreet under tailoring. Briefs for the Office: The Tailoring Argument
Le Slip Français
The most fun entry, and the one with an argument attached. Founded in 2011 on the straightforward proposition that France should make its own underwear again, it has become a genuinely successful manufacturer with a cheerful line in national self-mockery and a serious commitment to French production.
Buy it for the cotton, keep it for the fact that a company built on the word "slip" is now a household name in a G7 economy.
Also worth your attention
Merz b. Schwanen for loopwheeled cotton knitted on century-old machines at roughly walking pace, which produces a fabric with no tension in it and a softness that is difficult to explain and easy to feel. CDLP from Stockholm for a modern lyocell take with a cleaner, sharper look. Derek Rose for the English luxury version. Gunze for Japanese cotton knitwear at a standard the rest of the world underrates. Merz b. Schwanen brief · CDLP brief
When the money is not worth it
Two honest warnings.
Fine cottons hate hard use. If you are on a building site, on a bike, or sweating for a living, a technical fabric outperforms a beautiful one every time, and the beautiful one will not thank you. The Working Man's Brief: Underwear for the Site, the Van and the Ten-Hour Shift
And the price stops buying comfort long before it stops climbing. Somewhere around the Schiesser and Hanro level you have bought roughly all the comfort that exists; above that you are buying cotton quality, finishing and pleasure, which are real things to buy but should be bought knowingly.
The genuine argument for spending more is the one that runs through this whole blog: fewer, better, longer. Six excellent pairs beat twenty forgettable ones on cost per wear, on drawer space and on every morning in between. Buy It Once: The Durability Guide to Briefs That Last Years