The problem with men's underwear

It felt bad when Calvin Klein unveiled Shawn Mendes as a new face of the brand’s underwear campaign, at least for poor old Gen Z.

My generation got Marky Mark and they get Spotify’s Cliff Richard? The issue, though, wasn’t really Mendes. It’s more that he’d reminded me that I needed to buy new underwear, and how much I hate doing it.

Pants, for me, spell angst. The size, the style, the colour, the brand: you don’t want to overdo it, but to underdo it would be criminal, too. An ex once savaged me for my attempts at what I thought was a studied neutral chicness. ‘A bit Muji,’ was the verdict on my baggy charcoal briefs — and I felt shame, deep shame. Be it CK or Uniqlo, white or grey, my basic aim is to make no statement at all. There comes a point, though, where the tighty whities are not so tighty, and not so whitey either. You have to buy again. Thus I did what every panicked Londoner does in most life situations: I ran to Selfridges.

Selfridges has an ‘Underwear Room’, prominently signposted, which is already my idea of hell. Essentially though it’s just a large side area filled with undies, swimming shorts and pyjamas, as though you might need a spa break after all this stress. ‘Take your time!’ barked an attendant sunnily. ‘Don’t worry!’ Don’t worry? Some of these pants are in neon multicoloured camouflage. How can I not worry?

The racks were full of names of the men you’d presumably like to be — Ralph Lauren, Björn Borg, Aussie Bum. You could choose from various prints and patterns, but everything seemed too jokey for me, or too intense. Others reminded me of one of the top 10 worst words in the English language: ‘pouch’. The idea of humour, with undies, just seems so risky. Why pull down your trousers to deliver a punchline?

Since uni, I’ve mostly been in briefs. However, I do feel like I could swing (as it were) towards boxers, if only because, done right, they summon the idea of a British old-school elegance, as opposed to Love Island and Mark Wahlberg and porn. But that was far too big a decision to make off the cuff. I ended up spending 70 quid on the usual monochrome cop-out, on the basis that you don’t ever really change — you just learn to chuck more and more money at the same problem.