Women have worn clothing to restrict their waistlines for centuries. First came the corset, then the girdle and more recently a category of garments called “shapewear.”
Guys? Their only recourse, for the most part, has been to take deep breaths and suck it (their gut, that is) in.
No more.
Companies now are selling shapewear for men, from T-shirts to tank tops to briefs. One thing they all have in common?
The squeeze. The way they grab those “love handles” and hug them close.
“It’s nice to be able to smooth out the lumps and bumps,” said Heather Thomson, the designer of the Rip’t Fusion line of men’s shapewear.
“It’s a great foundation, and you can wear them all day, every day. It could be a guy who wants a smoother line beneath his cashmere, or a guy who has gained weight and doesn’t want to show the bulges.”
Thomson is also the designer behind the Yummie Tummie line of shapewear for women. She said after that product hit the market, she routinely heard from men who wanted something similar.
This year, she came up with what she calls an “undershirt on steroids.” The white garments, available in sizes from small to XXL and selling for $58, are sold at . Thomson said she is working with national retailers to offer the garments in stores.
A short-sleeved, white Rip’t Fusion T-shirt looks like a normal cotton undershirt from the neck to the middle of the chest. But then, the fabric changes from cotton to a polyester and spandex blend, and the shirt grows slimmer. Hold it up, and the garment looks like an hourglass.
The tank-top shirt offered by Equmen, another company selling men’s shapewear, does not ape an hourglass. Instead, it’s more like a sock — a very skinny sock.
“It’s seamless construction,” said Michael Flint, a sales and operations executive with the Australian company, which started in 2007. “It’s like a cylinder tube, like crocheting. You get a garment in one piece.”
The company’s shirts, which cost from $89 to $119 and are available in several styles and four colors, sell at selected Saks Fifth Avenue stores and online at .
The tops, he said, are more than just “tight tops.”
They “have compression that follows the muscle contours of a man’s body. It redistributes the body mass to something more square.”
Flint and Thomson champion the way the shirts contribute to trimmer “silhouettes,” how they can lop an inch off the waist line, how they improve posture.
We ran samples of both shirts through highly scientific tests. In short, I wore them. I tried them tucked in, and not. I slipped into them with suit pants that had grown tight and with jeans that lately have been complaining about my 43-year-old waistline.
The skinny? Both shirts improved my posture. With all of that fabric hugging my torso, everything straightened, or at least it made me stand up taller.
The Equmen tank-top did a better job with the silhouette and the waist-shrinking, but it also was less comfortable. Harry Houdini came to mind as I worked to maneuver my arms, elbows and shoulders into the tight tube.
The Rip’t Fusion shirt felt more like a T-shirt; the band of synthetic fabric forming the thin part of the hourglass squeezed, but not in the manner of a hungry anaconda.
My pants did seem to fit a little bit better when I wore the shirts. Looking in the mirror, I couldn’t determine a difference in my silhouette, but my wife did.
I’m in reasonably decent shape, but not good enough to wear either shirt alone. All of that constriction does a fair job at moving around the love handles. It does not, however, remove them.
Douglas Brown: 303-954-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com
