The T-shirt style that will instantly make you look more muscly, according to experts

Can one T-shirt really make all the difference?

(Getty Images)

If you’re looking for that quick fitness fix, the gym might not be your first port of call.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just throw on a specific type of T-shirt, with a specific type of design, and be instantly transformed into a Greek Adonis?

Of course it would, but how convinced are you by the idea that all you need to look like you’ve been working out is a wide-striped T-shirt?

According to GQ.com, finding said T-shirt will make you look broader and will “draw attention away from your midsection towards your shoulders and pecs”.

However, this might not be as simple as it sounds.

The age-old sartorial saying goes that wearing vertical stripes will make you look slimmer, while the horizontal alternative can have the less flattering, opposite effect.

This wide-striped Fendi T-shirt is one of the options listed on GQ.com. (Fendi/Selfridges)

However, this theory was disproved in 2009 when British psychologists Peter Thompson and Kyriaki Mikellidou conducted a study inspired by the Helmholtz Illusion, which demonstrates that a square made up of horizontal stripes appears taller and narrower than one consisting of vertical stripes.

After testing this out on 3D female models, they found that the horizontal stripes had a similarly slimming effect and found that those wearing dresses featuring horizontal lines appeared considerably slimmer than those clad in vertical-striped dresses.

Thus, when this theory is applied to mens' clothing, the wide-striped T-shirts featured on GQ’s site may actually make you look slimmer, not broader.

If you really want your clothes to draw attention to your gym-honed figure, Teo Van den Broeke, British GQ’s style and grooming editor, explains that a good first step would be actually going to the gym.

“The reality is, if you haven’t been going to the gym, you won’t look like you’ve been to the gym,” he told The Independent.

He added that illusions can be created by wearing certain colours and patterns, but that this ultimately depends on body type.

“A dark tee with a pale stripe across the chest will certainly accentuate an already worked out chest, but it won’t really help to minimise wider hips and it won’t manufacture pectoral development,” he added.

“My advice? Start doing some chest presses and then invest in the aforementioned tee.

“A dual pronged attack will be far more effective.”