Consensus among the menswear crowd is hard to come by. Ask a GQ staffer to ID the shirt of the summer, though, and they’ll name-drop the tank top with more gusto than Stephen Nedoroscik pommeling a horse. So when the Recommends squad set out to determine the very best of the category a few months ago, a not-so-surprising degree of consensus emerged as our saving grace. The name at the very top of our list? Hanes, the all-American sportswear juggernaut familiar to anyone who’s ever panic-ordered undies on Amazon.
Hanes is not a newcomer to the space. For well over a century, the bedside table mainstay has churned out affordable underpinnings with Nedoroscik-like consistency. In 2024, Hanes is to basics what Levi’s is to jeans or Champion is to sweatshirts—a stalwart of the genre so dominant it’s nearly synonymous with it. And much like its counterparts, Hanes’ value proposition remains laughably tricky to beat.
A pack of Hanes tanks will never run you more than a few bucks per unit, GQ contributor Reed Nelson notes. “They’re lightweight, inconspicuous, and require zero special treatment.” Do they hold up as well as the others we tested? It depends, Nelson says. (The short answer: not always.) But, he emphasizes, you get six of them—and they’re almost always on sale.
There are, of course, plenty of freakier tanks we endorse just as wholeheartedly. Hanes’ version is similar to them in design alone. In spirit, it’s far more grounded, the trusty uniform of that cranky older dude on your block who spends most of the summer on his stoop scowling at the new Poke spot across the street. (Can’t quite fathom ditching the outer layer entirely? He’s exactly who you should take your cues from.)
Better yet, pull up a seat next to the stoop and help scare off the Poke crowd by loudly reminding them how harmful their patronage is to the adjacent bodega. A dollar saved on Amazon is a dollar better distributed somewhere else—and he seems like the sort of fella who’d appreciate a cold six-pack of his own.
