The Boxer Short Is a Pyjama
Are boxer shorts good underwear? They are cut from the same pattern as pyjama shorts and sold on a health claim the evidence never backed. Where they belong.
In Praise of the Loose Boxer
Boxer shorts support nothing and fail under tailoring, yet remain the best thing in the drawer. What they are good at, and whether woven really beats knitted.
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There is a version of this blog that treats the loose boxer as the enemy. Unsupportive, unhelpful under trousers, useless the moment you break into a jog. All true. All beside the point.
The boxer short is not competing with the brief or the boxer brief, however much the marketing of the last forty years has insisted it is. It is a different kind of object with a different purpose, and judged against that purpose it is close to perfect. A Saturday morning in a pair of washed cotton boxers is one of the small reliable pleasures of being alive, and a site that could not say so would not be worth reading.
Where it comes from
The boxer short is the only garment in the drawer named after a sport it was never underwear for.
Boxers in the early twentieth century fought in trunks held up by a leather belt. In 1925 Jacob Golomb, who founded Everlast, replaced the belt with an elastic waistband so that fighters could move without a strip of leather across the ribs. The shape was practical outerwear for a boxing ring.
The move into underwear took decades and never quite finished. Through the middle of the century the boxer short was the loose, woven, unremarkable thing your grandfather wore under a suit, and it lost ground steadily to the brief, which was better at almost everything a working day asks of underwear.
Then in 1985 a Levi's advertisement put Nick Kamen in a launderette in a pair of white boxer shorts, and British sales of boxer shorts went vertical. It is one of the clearest examples in menswear of a single sixty-second film rearranging a category. What followed was a decade in which the boxer stood for relaxed, grown-up and unbothered, and the brief was recast as the punchline, an inversion the market has spent the years since quietly undoing The Great Rebrand: How the Boxer Brief Won the Argument.
What it is actually good at
Strip away the symbolism and there is a real garment underneath with real virtues.
Air. Nothing else in the drawer moves air the way a loose woven boxer does. On a still, humid night, when a close-fitting garment of any style is holding warmth against you, the boxer is doing the opposite. This is not a small thing in a hot climate, and it is the main reason the style survives in places where the brief otherwise dominates.
Nothing touching you. A boxer short does not grip, does not compress and does not sit against the body anywhere except the waistband. After a day in something that fits properly, that absence is the point. It is the sartorial equivalent of taking your shoes off.
Sleep. Body temperature drops overnight and rises again towards morning, and loose woven cotton handles that better than anything close-fitting. If you wear anything to bed, this is the correct thing to wear to bed, and it is an odd quirk of the market that boxers are sold as underwear and bought, by a lot of men, as pyjamas.
Recovery. After a long ride, a long run or a long day on your feet, a few hours in something that touches nothing is genuinely restorative. Cyclists have known this forever.
What it is bad at, stated plainly
It supports nothing. There is no pouch, no gathering, no engineering of any kind, and every argument this site makes about sport, walking distance and general containment applies against it Right Support, Right Sport: What to Wear for What You Do.
It bunches. Woven fabric in a slim trouser leg has nowhere to go and will find somewhere anyway, usually the least convenient place, and then you are the man rearranging himself on a train platform.
It rides and twists. The leg of a boxer short migrates over the course of a day because nothing is holding it.
It is a poor traveller. Woven cotton is bulky in a bag and slow off the line in a sink Travel Light: The One-Bag Case for Briefs.
None of that is a flaw in the design. It is a description of a garment doing exactly what it was cut to do, being asked to do something else.
Woven or knitted
The two things sold as boxer shorts are barely the same garment, and this is the distinction most men have never had explained.
Woven boxers are made from shirting: poplin, oxford cloth, madras, chambray, sometimes flannel in winter. No stretch, so they are cut generously and they drape. They rustle slightly. They take a crease. They are the ones that feel like a small luxury and the ones that behave worst under trousers.
Knitted boxers are jersey, the same family of fabric as a T-shirt, so they have a little give and cling somewhat more. They are less bulky, slightly better behaved under clothes and considerably less nice on a hot night. They are the compromise version, and if you want a compromise there are better ones available in the trunk The Trunk Is the Sweet Spot.
If you are buying loose boxers to enjoy them, buy woven. If you are buying them to wear under work trousers, you probably want a different style altogether.
What to look for
The waistband should be covered rather than exposed elastic, and it should be wide. Narrow elastic in a garment with this much fabric hanging off it rolls within a year.
The fly matters more than in any other style, because it is the only style where the fly is doing structural work rather than being a design flourish. A buttoned fly on a woven boxer sits flat and stays shut. A gaping unfastened fly on a badly cut pair is the most common complaint about the whole category.
Look for a proper seat. Cheap boxers are cut flat and pull across the back when you sit. Better ones have a curved seat panel and hang correctly.
Two hundred count poplin or an oxford cloth in the 120 to 140 gram range is the sweet spot for warm weather woven cotton boxer short. For winter, brushed cotton or a light flannel is worth the drawer space brushed cotton boxer short.
Buy your actual waist. A boxer short is not held on by tension and sizing up for extra room just gives the waistband more work to do.
The honest position
Own some. Wear them in the evening, wear them in bed, wear them on the hottest week of the year, wear them the day after a marathon. Do not wear them to a wedding under a slim navy suit and then conclude that underwear is all the same Under the Suit: What to Wear on Your Wedding Day.
The mistake of the nineties was not that men bought boxer shorts. It was that men bought boxer shorts for every occasion, including all the ones the garment was never designed for, and then blamed their underwear for being uncomfortable. Plenty of us gave a decade to that and assumed it was simply what a body felt like A Letter to My Nineteen Year Old Self, Who Wore Boxers. The boxer short deserved better than being made into a symbol. It is a very good pair of loose cotton shorts and it should be allowed to be that.
Questions people ask
Are boxer shorts bad for you?
No. The claim usually being reached for is about temperature and fertility, and the evidence there is weaker and more contested than either side of the argument tends to admit Do Briefs Affect Fertility? What the Study Actually Says. Boxers are not a health product and they are not a health risk. They are just loose shorts.
Can you wear boxer shorts under a suit?
You can, and men did for fifty years, but a slim modern suit trouser is a much less forgiving cut than the trousers boxers were designed under. If the trouser has real room in it and a proper break, a woven boxer is fine and will be cooler than the alternative. In anything tapered, expect bunching.
Why do my boxer shorts ride up?
Because nothing is holding them down. It is inherent to the style rather than a fault in the pair you bought, though a badly cut seat and a leg opening that is too narrow both make it worse. If it bothers you, the trunk gives you a similar amount of airflow with a leg that stays where you put it.
Woven or knitted boxer shorts, which is better?
Woven if you want the thing boxers are actually good at, which is air and looseness. Knitted if you want something closer to a very relaxed boxer brief. They are different garments sold under one name, and most men who say they dislike boxer shorts have only ever worn cheap knitted ones.