T-shirts are back on the fashion agenda – did they ever leave? – with the frenzied discourse surrounding Season Two of FX’s hit series The Bear, and the sartorial choices of its star, Mr Jeremy Allen White, reminding us all of the enduring appeal of a classic white tee. And while we’re not here to deny that a white tee can indeed do wonders for a man’s style, especially when, as in the case of The Bear’s Carmy, it’s cut to fit, layered over a gym-honed torso and accessorised with a few strategically placed tattoos, we must also acknowledge the power of the T-shirt as a statement.

A T-shirt is your own personal billboard, a space for you to rep whatever band, sports team or political movement you’re into, but it’s also somewhere for designers to show off their own creativity. This is especially true of streetwear brands, for whom the graphic or logo T-shirt has become a kind of essentialist expression of their design philosophy: the equivalent of a chair to a product designer, or a Shakespearean soliloquy to an actor. And if you’re good at designing T-shirts, chances are you’ll be good at other things, too: just look at Mr Jerry Lorenzo of Fear of God, who got his big break designing tour merchandise for Mr Justin Bieber.

But what makes a good graphic T-shirt? And what T-shirt brands should you have on your radar in 2023? We’re into the show-not-tell kind of style advice here at MR PORTER, so in that spirit, here are five we’ve got our eye on right now.