Given the muted elegance of the product — the delicacy of its drape, the coziness of its texture, the cool of its blue — it was inevitable that the fashion system should snap up the chambray shirt and recontextualize its appeal. An item familiar from the Rosie the Riveter poster, now reproduced ceaselessly in the J.Crew catalog, qualifies as a characteristic garment of the decade. The new-school chambray shirt is, for women, a natural complement to the slouchiness of the boyfriend jean and an item praised as a way of attaining an “effortless” cool, meaning that it is representative of an elegance achieved by struggling to give the impression of not having to try too hard. For men, it is likewise accepted as a new staple of daily dress, a fail-proof means of mixing up your suit or impressing your date; put together with the chukka boots and the flat-front chinos, a chambray shirt transforms a lad into the very model of the modern bro about town.
Troy Patterson, “On Clothing”, The New York Times Magazine (6 September 2015), 16.