A Brief Review of Mr. Davis Undershirt

I first discovered the Mr. Davis Undershirt about a year ago, just before they were planning to hit the market.

Mr. Davis Undershirts

Their goal: To create premium undershirts, that fit and feel great, stay tucked, and aren’t visible through your outer shirts (aka: invisible undershirt).

I got my hands on an early prototype and provided the company some initial feedback.

Fast forward 10 months, Mr. Davis had a successful Kickstarter campaign and raised enough funds to launch the product, built their new website, and probably had a little left over for some R&D.

The founder reached out to me and offered up one of their latest generation Mr. Davis Undershirts, that had been improved from the first iteration I tried back in January.

Mr. Davis Undershirt Review

So I decided to put my Mr. Davis undershirt to the test.

I’ve been wearing it pretty regularly over the last couple of weeks which of course accelerates what will happen wearing and washing the undershirt over a period of time.

Here’s what I found.

Mr. Davis Undershirts – The Good

Fit

Overall fit and feel of Mr. Davis is pretty amazing. It’s easily as good as any other premium undershirt I’ve tried at prices $10 – $20 more.

Good body fit and body length. Undershirt stays tucked fairly well. Sleeve fit and length are great. It’s really spot on in this category.

Fabric

Fabric feels really nice on the skin. Again, it’s easily as good or better than other premium undershirts priced higher than Mr. Davis.

To learn more about Bamboo from Viscose, check out this Wikipedia article.

V-Neck

V-neck depth is good for one button of your outside shirt undone, but not two — the collar line does show with two buttons undone.

Breathability

Wearing temperature is as good, or slightly better than other fitted stretch undershirts that contain lycra / spandex.

Invisibility

The “invisibility” factor of not showing through my outer-shirt doesn’t really resonate with me, because, well…I dress pretty casually.  I never really wear any outer shirt that is so light in color that my undershirt will show through.  

The better feature for me would be a slightly deeper v-neck so I could wear two buttons undone, instead of just one.

I’m listing it here in this category because to me, it’s not good or bad. It’s just a feature that some people may be looking for.

In A Nutshell

At a high level, the Mr. Davis undershirt really has a lot to offer, especially when you can get it as low as $18, though without subscription it’s $24.

Mr. Davis Undershirt – The Not So Good

Not all features of these undershirts are amazing. The things I found not so good are:

Loose Collar

The collar line fits a bit loose in the back neck area on me, and the collar itself doesn’t lay as flat as i would like it to. it bends pretty easy, so unless you iron the collar line, it might not lay flat.

Pilling

After several wears, the fabric is starting to pill quite a bit, especially in the high wear regions like the underarm and some on the collar.

Although the pilling itself doesn’t change the way the fabric feels on my skin, it does take away from the look of the garment, and it is beginning to look pre-maturely worn.

Underarm Staining

Due to the light-brown color, I can visibly notice some underarm “staining”. This is a direct result of a little bit of underarm sweat and antiperspirant getting on the underarm area of the undershirt.

No matter how hard i try, my underarms are still slightly wet when i get dressed. The antiperspirant just doesn’t want to fully dry.

Since the undershirts are fitted and fit close into my underarm region, there is a bit of transfer to the undershirt. Granted, this is the same for all of the sleeved undershirts I wear, but when you’re wearing white undershirts, you just don’t see it as much.

I do need to wash the Mr. Davis undershirt, so we’ll see how well the stains wash out.

I can say that even though I let the undershirt fully air out/dry between wearings, the stains are still visible.

Feels Warmer

On the warmer days, due to the body hugging fit (from spandex), I did notice that I felt warmer wearing Mr. Davis than if I were wearing something with a slight bit of room or a tank top.

Granted, it performed about the same as any other spandex fitted undershirt I’ve tried, so this is merely an observation.

In other words, I don’t feel that much cooler wearing Mr. Davis than I do other similar undershirts like UnderFit, Tommy John, Sloane Men, and Mack Weldon.

Though it probably is a hair cooler wearing than some of those I just listed.

Loose Threads

There are some loose threads starting to form around sleeves and bottom of the shirt.

Though, since I see that on many other undershirts, I’m not going to unfairly grade Mr. Davis on this issue alone.

Final Thoughts

While I do like the overall Mr. Davis undershirt experience, and really want to consider it for my favorite undershirts list, I’m not sure it’ll make it for the reasons listed above.

I’ll have to noodle on a while.

Though, the fact that I’m inclined to keep it in my undershirt drawer tells me that it just might make the list.

14 thoughts on “A Brief Review of Mr. Davis Undershirt”

  1. I bought a five-pack of the Mr. Davis tone colored vneck undershirts. I love them. But, I have tried to order more undershirts, and their website doesn’t work. I’ve left them a trail of email messages, of which they responded to the first, but have never followed up on. Are they even in business?

    I think you should include a website review in your column for any of your favorites or sponsors. It is inexcusable that any product you review has a dysfunctional website. Check out Pimaking. Their website doesn’t work either. As on on-line retailer myself, I can’t believe that any company would go to so much trouble to promote their products, and lose sales because they didn’t bother to understand that website facility may be as equally important as the actual product.

    Reply
    • John,

      We’re sorry you’ve had a bad experience ordering but we are definitely open and haven’t had similar issues from other users, so it must be something specific to your browser. We’d be happy to hop on the phone to manually place an order and resolve the issue for you. We’re glad you love the shirts but as you say, you need to be able to buy them for the thing to work :).

      Reply
      • Same message you left me two months ago. Glad you respond quickly in a public forum. How about doing the same from email in sent to you directly from your site?

        You have no phone number on your site. What is it? I’d rather call you.

        And, I can assure you, if it is my browser, you’ve got some work to do. I’ve tried on both Chrome and Safari…neither work after trying from multiple devices. I haven’t used Explorer, but if that is the only Browser that works, your missing a whole lot of Apple and Android users.

      • John

        We’ll make it right and figure out what issue you’re having. Chrome and Safari represent the bulk of our sales, so we’re very keen on resolving your issue. I’ve responded privately with my personal cell and you can call me at your convenience.

        Our customer relationships are our most valuable asset and we will always err on the side of the customer to make things right. I apologize that we’ve let you down in this case but we will make sure we resolve the matter to your satisfaction.

        Jeremy

        Founder, Mr. Davis

    • heya john,

      good to hear from you buddy and thanks for taking the time to comment!

      firstly, i forwarded your comment/feedback over to the founder of mr. davis. hopefully he’ll get the message and look into the issue as quickly as possible.

      personally speaking, i really don’t have the time to do website reviews. but as a guy who appreciates a good online shopping experience, if i see something of notable interest, i may mention it in product announcement or review articles.

      the mr. davis website is actually pretty slick looking, functioning, and seems to be working ok for me from a browsing/adding-to-cart pov.

      if there is something you can’t do, i think it would be helpful for you to post additional, more specific information here. no offense here, but saying “their website doesn’t work” is a bit too ambiguous for anyone to do anything about.

      not sure how many emails you’ve sent them, or over what duration, but if they’re not responding within at least one (1-2) business days, then i agree that is not acceptable.

      as for other websites working/not working, i agree that it’s pretty bad form for an online retailer’s website to “not work”. though, i also understand that things break and sometimes it’s just not easy to know or identify when certain functionality breaks on a website.

      i don’t know about you, but in all of the time i’ve worked online, i’ve never found a way to ensure that every part of a website is perfectly functioning, every day, all the time. though it is pretty easy to make sure the main things (website is up, checkout is working) are not broken.

      Reply
      • Thanks for getting back to me. Specifically, a shopping cart function doesn’t exist, and if you select an item and hit checkout, it doesn’t go anywhere. It just shows that you selected the item.

        Curious to me is that the very first time I tried their site, I was able to place an order. Believe me, I am no stranger to technology. They really need to fix this. There are so many good third party shopping cart products they can use to clean this up. They have a great product, but they must be losing a lot of business. I’d be very interested in finding out their “abandon” rates after a user hits the checkout button. This should be a real clue to them.

        I have tried this from my PC, from two different ipads, and my iphone. The experience is exactly the same.

        Check out Pimaking. They look like they are a new product and are now promoting their product on your site, but they should have waited until their site was fully baked. Again, a shame.

      • hey john, this is very weird for sure.

        i can go to the website (mrdavis.com), visit a product page (single mr. davis undershirt), and add that product to my cart (white, medium, v-neck) and see the cart.

        i did that both on my windows pc/firefox as well as my mobile phone (android/chrome) and could see the product in the cart and all the checkout fields (billing info, shipping info, credit card fields).

        i did not attempt to fill out all the fields and complete checkout, because i don’t want to complete a purchase, but i definitely see the cart function.

        considering you’ve tried on so many different devices, assumably with different ip addresses, it’s hard to know what might be causing your issue. if the constant is that you’re accessing all those devices from your home network, maybe something in your router is blocking the mr. davis website shopping cart?

        all i can say is that everything is (or seems to be) working for me — and personally, i’m a fan of the shopping experience. the squarespace (shopping cart) shopping experience functionality has got some pretty nice user experience nuances.

        if you wanna tell me exactly which products you are selecting, what colors, styles and sizes, i can try to duplicate what you’re doing and see what i come up with.

        also, there are plenty of screen sharing technologies that jeremy can utilize to share your screen and see what your seeing as you attempt to checkout.

        regarding pimaking — well they are not new and not newly promoting their product on my site. the article i wrote about them is from 2 years ago. granted, i agree with you that their website is not very good, but the shopping cart does work.

      • I just got off the phone with Jeremy from Mr. Davis. Very nice guy. He is going to dig much deeper into this. I appreciate that he takes this very seriously and is not dismissive that my issue is an isolated instance. I am glad to help him replicate my problem and I assume that he will find a way to fix it.

        I will update this blog post as we figure it out. I would not want to leave your readers with the impression that because of the technical difficulties, they should not buy the product. Their t-shirts are great. I wouldn’t spend anytime doing this if I didn’t love the product. I”m expecting them to fix this in short order, and I wish them great success as they build a loyal customer following.

      • This may be sequentially out of order…see below.

        After a personal conversation with the owner of Mr. Davis, I now see the problem. This was my error and I want to personally thank the Mr. Davis guys for helping me out.

        My confusion came from trying to order a 5 pack of shirts. Apparently, many of their customers wanted to order a 5 pack that consisted of more than one color. They accommodated this request. In doing so, they required that each individual item in a 5 pack needed to be ordered separately. I thought, by ordering one item, that i was actually ordering the entire 5 pack. After selecting one item, I was then trying to checkout. When I clicked on the checkout button, it didn’t go anywhere. If I had selected 5 individual items, the checkout function worked correctly.

        I successfully placed an order this morning and I will continue to buy their product. I wish them great success.

  2. “I’ve been wearing it pretty regularly over the last couple of weeks…I do need to wash the Mr. Davis, so we’ll see how well the stains wash out. I can say that even though I let the undershirt fully air out/dry between wearings, the stains are still visible.”

    Unless I’m misunderstanding you, you’ve been wearing this undershirt regularly for several weeks, and between wearings, you air out/dry it, but you don’t wash it? I hesitate to ask this, but do you do the same thing with your boxers/briefs and socks? Suddenly you’re making me feel like some sort of hygiene freak for laundering all my undergarments after every wear…doesn’t (almost) everybody do that?

    Reply
  3. Tug – I’m late responding to this one. I appreciate you responding to my comment about these on the v-neck sweater post. I wanted to give you my experience with these. I think they’re definitely nice undershirts, though nothing is perfect.

    I’m a fairly small guy (5’9″, 150-155) with an athletic body type – wider shoulders than waist. I’ve pretty much always been a perfect small/medium so it’s hard to buy shirts without trying them on. Since I ordered 3 Mr. Davis shirts, I got a small and 2 mediums.

    The small fits pretty snug. But the shoulders are a bit narrow for my liking and so the sleeve length ends up being short. And the sleeves themselves are a little too wide for me so the bottom of the sleeve can ride up under my armpit a little if I’m not careful. The medium fits a little looser – I feel like a hipster American Apparel model if I don’t have any shirt on top. But I have found on the medium that the neck is wide and deep enough I can wear a button down with 2 buttons open and not show. I to make the sure the back of the neck doesn’t go too low I pull the shoulders as wide as possible before putting another shirt on.

    Overall, the feel is pretty nice. I’ve never been hot in one, even the snug small. I give credit to the bamboo material. The one thing that really sells me on these has been that I haven’t sweated through once. I wore one with a full suit on a 90 degree day and in a normal undershirt would have sweat through the pits and back and didn’t have a mark when I took my jacket off. That was pretty much enough for me right there. I’ve also only washed them a couple times each so I can’t speak to the fabric pilling. It might be gross, but I try to wear then 2-3 times before washing. I don’t wear them too often – mostly with sweaters or when I’m afraid I’ll sweat through – and since I have 3 I can rotate them.

    Hope this helps. -Matt

    Reply
    • good stuff matt — thanks for sharing the extra details!

      yeah, viscose from bamboo is good because it’s both more absorbent than cotton (it can take three times it’s weight in water), but it also has wicking characteristics as well which means its known to dry faster as well.

      sounds like it did perform well for you in that you didn’t sweat-through to your outer shirt, so if it works for you in that regard, that’s great!

      don’t feel to self-conscious about wearing them multiple times between washings. i wore my mr. davis undershirt a whole lot more than that (in between washings) when i was testing it. probably at least 5 times, maybe more. i’m thinking the natural anti-microbial properties of bamboo help a little as well (:

      Reply

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