Unisex School Shirts?

[SarahJ87]

Hi,

Does anyone have any recommendations for unisex school shirts? Just ideally want to have the same for my boy/girl twins. Saves him accidentally grab a blouse from the pile!

Seen them on School uniform direct, but does anyone know if there’s other options?

How old are your twins?

Girls and boys button on different sides.
Girls are more tailored to allow for different shapes.

Unisex generally means cut for boys.

Surely you just buy short-sleeve “boys’” shirts – available anywhere. DD will not have the fitted shirt with tiny cap sleeves but presume that is your aim.

Though tbh if I were the boy or girl twin I would want to wear my own shirts, however they were cut. And even if they were cut the same.

Could you buy them from different stores so they can quickly check the labels if they're in a hurry?

Marks and Spencer do them I think!

Also, lovely to see the word 'blouse', very underused OP!

Will start yr7 in September

if they're at secondary school do they not need different cuts of shirt? Or they probably will do soon, teenage boys and girls tend to be very different shapes once they hit puberty!
"unisex" IME tends to mean men's cut which usually results in them being too wide across the shoulders and too narrow across the hips on women.

Is your girl twin seriously going to want to wear her brother's whiffy-armpitted/Lynx-scented shirts?

Teenagers need their own clothes.

They will have there own sets, but trying to avoid an inevitable issue if they pick the wrong ones up from the ironing pile.

Yes, this would be my recommendation too. We do this with pants (boxers) for my teen boys.
Unisex doesn’t work quite as well when puberty hits. Though if they’re both happy with it, look at the available “girls” and “boys” shirts and see which you think would work best for both. It’ll basically be button direction and possibly sleeve cut.

Name labels? Surely needed for when they take them off for PE

Don’t do this to your daughter. Unisex means boy shaped. It might not make a big difference right now but it will do rapidly once puberty hits.
Sew name tapes into the collars so they can see in seconds if they’ve got the wrong shirt.

Yes, label them (or get the kids to). Otherwise leave it as a learning experience.

As with most things-unisex does not exist. It just means boy stuff that girls are allowed to use. Either buy them their own shirts or buy all girl ones.

Yes, this. Lots of children would feel a bit unhappy about wearing hand-me-downs from an older same-sex sibling that still had the older child's name label in, rather than their own; but I can't see things going well if anybody else notices a label with a girl's name in a shirt worn by a boy, or vice versa.

I suppose you could get labels that just use their surname (if not too common) or 'G. Smith' if their names are Gertrude and Gary.

Are they really the same shape? I mean if you can, I would get boys shirts that your girl finds comfy too, but maybe your boy has wider shoulders and your girl has the start of breasts, or will soon so they need different sizes? I mean I totally think boys and girls is unnecessary for little kids, but I would have thought by year 7, different body shapes would warrant it.

Worse than that: it means boy stuff that girls have to use, because nobody has deemed them important enough to have a separate appropriately-designed one of their own.

I think you are overthinking this. As other has stated Unisex are in reality boys shape but if your daughter is happy with that then go for it. I have two boys but with very different body shapes, they both had their favourite shirts, even though they were bog standard white shirts from various shops eg. Asda, M&S, Tesco. Slightly different sizes and shapes so start with cheap ones and let them choose. Totally agree with the lynx sented ones though, that smell is difficult to get off 😀

Thanks all for your feedback, think I might have misjudged as I thought it’d be fine as they currently share the smart shirts as only need them for school photos and the formal events. So have only ever bought one pack.

Will have a think and also ask them!

An 11yo might be ok in a "boys" shirt but they soon develop.

Try putting a coloured dot on the labels? Red and purple for example. They will have other uniform to distinguish between as well... PE kit, ties, trousers... shirts will be no more difficult.

(My DDs actually share a lot of uniform... its just labelled with our surname, but its a rare one. But they are both girls and a similar size!)

Thanks, great idea.

That’s very true about the other uniform. Although I would be surprised if they get confused between trousers and skirts! 😂

We have been given a couple of the SUD unisex ones that button on the left. And that were fine for both atm. So hence asking the question.

They might be fine at the moment but give it a year and I suspect they'll be very different shapes and sizes! DSD had bigger boobs than me by the end of year 8!!

My daughter vastly prefers boys t shirts as they’re apparently comfier but she can’t wear boys button tops now that she’s 12 as they just aren’t going to fit her properly - either you’d need to size way up or they’d pull in all the wrong places. I like the suggestion above of getting one set from maybe m&s and one set from next and then they can’t mix it up

Thanks, really helpful. When we looked in M&S the fit didn’t seem a great deal different between the boys and girls ones! But trust most of the posters on here!