“Nearly £400 for a shirt?” I hear you splutter. Yes. But a McNair mountain shirt is no ordinary shirt. If you believe the marketing spiel, it’s the shirt that thinks it’s a jacket. And, having worn mine for the past two months, in the cold and snow, on crisp sunny days, and even fresh out of the bath, finding it to be the ideal garment for each situation, I imagine that it probably does think.
The mountain shirt is the brainchild of Scotsman, snowboard instructor and mountain guide Neil McNair. Inspired by mountaineers’ tales about the durability of Dachstein’s old-school boiled-wool gloves, McNair set out to create a piece of clothing that would similarly work with nature to protect the wearer, rather than creating a barrier between the two. A passionate anti-waste campaigner in his home, Tignes, McNair was determined to create the “unplastic jacket”: a fully natural, sustainable and durable jacket-cum-mid-layer.
No mere nod to the “lumbersexual” trend, McNair’s shirts give Savile Row suits a run for their tailoring money. First, sustainably sourced merino lambswool is selected from New Zealand and shipped to the McNair Mill in Slaithwaite, in deepest loveliest Yorkshire. Merino is the ideal raw material for the shirts, being naturally water-resistant, odour-resistant and temperature-regulating. However, McNair further empowers his merino by steaming and raising it for ultimate thermal efficiency and softness.
Remarkably, every McNair shirt is designed, dyed, blended, spun, woven, milled, raised, steamed and completed at the Mill and at neighbouring W.T. Johnson & Sons, a fourth-generation family-owned textile dyeing and finishing company. Thus, each shirt is crafted in its entirety within a 10-mile radius, making for a carbon footprint the size of one of its buttons. Each one comes with a hand-written label inside stating its unique number, the name of the expert McNair tailor who made it (thanks go to Josie, who made mine) and care instructions (hang outside to air occasionally).
McNair launched his shirts to the public last winter, yet they’ve already achieved cult status. Josie and the gang have been sewing all summer to meet demand and create an expanded selection of shirts for this winter. There are four different shirts for both men and women, with the option to have each made to measure if you skip over to the Mill. Chose between virgin (soft), recycled (durable) and heavy (seriously warm) merino and between a standard or long fit, the latter being ideal for winter sports as it offers rear coverage and an extra 5cm in the arm. Each features a slim fit that has you looking suave on the hill and in the bar yet leaves sufficient room around the shoulders and elbows for skiing and riding.
I could try to baffle you with some of the technical details that make McNair shirts so special – the weather baffle (I didn’t know it was a thing either) that runs the length of the shirt’s placket to provide a fully wind-proof closure, the buttons sewn on with thermally bonded Ascolite thread for durability, and the neat sunglasses loop on the breast pocket – but surely it’s enough to say that this is a piece of technical yet uncomplicated mountain kit, exquisitely and sustainably crafted in Yorkshire, that works as a jacket and a mid-layer and looks the business.
