I once spent forty-five dollars on a single polo shirt for a four-year-old. It was a Ralph Lauren pique cotton number in a very specific shade of ‘Hamptons Blue.’ I bought it for a cousin’s wedding in 2022, thinking my son would look like a little gentleman. He looked like a gentleman for exactly fourteen minutes before he discovered a bowl of cocktail frankfurts and proceeded to use the ‘Hamptons Blue’ sleeve as a napkin for tomato sauce. That stain never came out. The shirt shrank in a cold wash. It was a disaster.
That was the turning point. I realized that buying expensive clothes for people who literally don’t have fully developed impulse control is a form of temporary insanity. Now, I buy the $6 ones from Best & Less. I’m not even joking. I have a drawer full of them.
The day I realized I was a sucker
I used to think that ‘budget’ meant ‘disposable.’ I assumed that if a polo shirt cost less than a cup of coffee in Sydney, it would probably dissolve the moment it touched soapy water. But after the Great Tomato Sauce Incident, I went to the Best & Less in Marrickville—which, by the way, has the most chaotic layout of any store in existence—and grabbed three of their ‘Essentials’ polos just to get through the week.
What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. It’s not that the cheap shirts are ‘luxury’ items. They aren’t. They feel a bit stiff at first, almost like they’ve been starched with industrial-grade glue. But here’s the thing: they survive. I’ve put these $6 shirts through the absolute ringer. I’m talking mud, grease, paint, and that weird sticky stuff they get on their hands at daycare that I’m 90% sure is just straight sugar.
The Best & Less polo is the cockroach of the garment world. It will outlast us all.
The $6 Essentials polo: A statistical anomaly
I actually tracked this because I’m a nerd. I bought six of the ‘Essentials’ range in January 2023. I’ve washed them at least once a week for a year. I measured the sleeve length on a size 4. After 52 washes, the sleeve shrank exactly 1.8 centimeters. That’s it. For a shirt that costs less than a fancy chocolate bar, that is an insane level of durability. I’ve had Bonds shirts that cost triple the price and turned into crop tops after three months.
Anyway, I was at the store the other day and I noticed they have two different ‘tiers’ of polos. There’s the ‘Essentials’ and then the ‘School’ range. Don’t buy the ‘Essentials’ if you want a soft feel. They are scratchy. If your kid is sensory-sensitive, they will hate you for making them wear it. Spend the extra two dollars for the ‘School’ poly-cotton blend. It’s significantly softer and doesn’t feel like you’re dressing your child in a burlap sack.
Cotton vs. Poly-blend (The hill I will die on)
I know people will disagree with me on this, and I’ll probably get emails from the ‘natural fibers only’ crowd, but 100% cotton polo shirts for kids are a total scam. There, I said it. Cotton is a nightmare. It wrinkles if you even look at it funny. It holds onto stains like a core memory. And if you don’t pull it out of the dryer the exact millisecond the cycle ends, it looks like it’s been chewed by a cow.
The Best & Less poly-cotton blends (usually 65/35) are superior for one reason: you don’t have to iron them. I refuse to iron a toddler’s shirt. I have better things to do with my life, like staring into the middle distance or trying to remember where I left my keys. The poly-blend comes out of the wash, you shake it once, and it’s good to go. It stays white longer, too. Pure cotton turns that depressing shade of ‘grey-ish yellow’ after six months. Poly-blend stays bright. It’s fake, it’s plastic, and it’s glorious.
I might be wrong about the breathability—some people say the polyester makes kids sweat more. Maybe? But my kids are running around like caffeinated squirrels regardless of what they’re wearing. They’re going to be sweaty anyway. I’d rather they be sweaty in a shirt that doesn’t need twenty minutes of steam-pressing.
The part that actually sucks
Look, it’s not all sunshine and cheap prices. The buttons on Best & Less polos are trash. I’ve had at least four buttons just… pop off. Not because of any heavy lifting, but because the thread they use is apparently made of spiderwebs and hope. I once had a button fall off while I was literally just buttoning it up in the car park before a school photo. I had to use a safety pin. My son looks like a punk rocker in his 2023 class photo because of a 5-cent button.
Also, the sizing is a total roll of the dice. A size 4 in the navy blue might be totally different from a size 4 in the white. I don’t know who is doing the quality control there, but I suspect they’re just eyeballing it. I always hold the shirts up against each other in the aisle to make sure they’re actually the same size. People look at me like I’m crazy, but I’ve been burned before.
I also have a weird, probably irrational hatred for their ‘Gold’ label stuff. I don’t even know if they still call it that, but any time they try to make a ‘premium’ version of a basic item, it fails. Stick to the basics. The moment Best & Less tries to get fancy with embroidery or ‘designer’ trim, the quality falls off a cliff. Just give me the plain, boring, indestructible shirt.
The laundry nightmare
I should mention my biggest failure. Last winter, I accidentally washed a brand new red Best & Less polo with a load of white school shirts. I thought, ‘Surely the dye won’t bleed on a cold wash.’ I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. Everything turned a very vibrant, very un-school-approved shade of bubblegum pink. It cost me $60 to replace the ruined whites. The irony of trying to save money by buying $6 shirts only to destroy $60 worth of other clothes is not lost on me. It felt like the universe was laughing at my cheapness.
But even then, the red shirt stayed red. It didn’t fade. It didn’t pill. It just stood there in the laundry basket, mocking me with its vibrant, non-faded color. It’s still in the drawer. I can’t bring myself to throw it away because it’s still in perfect condition, even if it is the harbinger of my laundry doom.
I honestly judge parents who send their kids to school in perfectly ironed, expensive 100% cotton polos. You either have way too much time on your hands or you’re paying someone else to suffer through the ironing for you. Either way, we aren’t the same. I’m over here in the poly-blend trenches, and I’m never leaving.
Is it weird that I have such strong feelings about discount school-wear? Probably. But when you’ve spent as much time as I have scrubbing grass stains out of fabric, you start to appreciate the small wins. And a $6 shirt that refuses to die is a very big win in my book.
Do the buttons still fall off? Yes. Is the store a nightmare to navigate? Absolutely. But I’ll take that over a $45 ‘Hamptons Blue’ disaster any day of the week.
Are we all just pretending the pique fabric doesn’t itch them, though? I genuinely don’t know.
