The Classic

“	I have just dug through the dirty half of those bags, more than ten or twenty of them. Then, in a bag of damp ones, I found the shirt.	”
Chris on the shirt, nonchalantly revealing Barb has hoarded twenty bags of old clothing without even bothering to dry them off.

Chris wearing 'The Classic' in 2006.

Ten years later.

The Classic is a red and blue (seemingly Ralph Lauren brand) rugby shirt formerly worn by Chris from sometime before 2 February 2004 to when he became a Tomgirl in 2011. It was initially thought to be lost in 2014 to the house fire at 14 Branchland Court, but had survived at the bottom of a soaked and grimy garbage bag full of clothing. Prompted by the Financhu Crisis, Chris went searching for it in April 2017, hoping to sell it to a fan, although no such sale came to pass. As of August 2018, the original shirt is lost. In October 2019, Chris acquired the 'Mark 2' Classic, a cheap imitation sporting orange and blue instead of the original red and blue. The Classic 2.0 is still under Chris's possession after his arrest for incest, but as of December 2023, Chris begun acquiring newer shirts in an attempt to replicate the original, all of which having their own inaccuracies. Even when Chris began selling and wearing his own version and design of the shirt in November 2025, it had several obvious differences from the original.

The shirt

• The red shirt has three stripes of navy blue (with a white outline) along the front and back and on the sleeves, as well as another stripe at the very top across the shoulders (connecting the front and back).
• It has buttons and a baby blue collar, something that possibly helped Chris wear his Sonichu medallion without causing him discomfort.
• The cuffs are red, but were eventually sewn with two stripes of a dark green fabric (at some point between 12 March and 17 June 2005) due to the cuffs getting holes. Chris opted to never depict the altered cuffs in his drawings.
• There is a crest inside of the top blue stripe at the left side.
• Chris typically wore another shirt underneath The Classic.

None of Chris's "replicas" have really gotten close to being an actual recreation of the shirt.

History

First drawn appearance, 2004.

First IRL appearance, 2004.

The Classic makes its first drawn appearance on Chris's "Christian's Christian" custom Pokémon card, created on 2 February 2004. The same self-portrait also appears on CWC's Sonichu Site as "CWCtoon.jpg". The shirt next appears in the classic Sonichu strip "Christian + Sonichu vs. the Mastermind!" from Sonichu 0, drawn 18 March 2004. In both these early appearances the blue and white colors are inverted. In the classic strip drawn on 8 May 2004 the colors are in the correct order, although there are only two blue stripes rather than the three which the real shirt has. It would be several issues before Chris began drawing the shirt with all three blue stripes. To this day Chris still grossly exaggerates the size of the white stripes and tends to use cyan in place of navy blue.

On 15 November 2004, Chris took an iconic photograph wearing the shirt, possibly marking the earliest recorded appearance of the Classic IRL (though Chris did also take a very similar photograph at an unknown time).

The first appearance of the Classic on video is in the All I Want For Christmas Is a Pretty Girlfriend clip, filmed on 20 December 2004. The shirt made many more appearances between 2005 and 2009 - Chris wore it on 24 February 2007 during Christian Weston Chandler's FUTURE MESSAGE, the first video he uploaded to YouTube.

The shirt made its last appearance of the classic Chris era on 23 November 2009, when he filmed CWC Personal Sonichu Presentation. On 10 January 2014, 14 Branchland Court was gutted by a fire - the shirt was thought lost by both Chris and his fans until April 2017, when it was found in a bag of laundry that was still damp from the water used to put the fire out.

Offered for sale

“	Be glad I found it.	”
Chris

The Classic, after being excavated from bags of hoard, still wet from the water firefighters used to combat the fire three years prior.

Following the house fire and subsequent renovation, the Chandlers moved back into 14 Branchland Court. Naturally, Barb insisted on bringing the hoard back into the house, even the portions ruined by the fire or the efforts to extinguish it. The laundry room became a dumping ground for "a mountain pile" of trash bags filled with water-damaged clothing, which festered in there for three years.

In April 2017, when Chris sifted through them in his quest to find The Classic, the contents were laced with mold. Chris, being naive, failed to realize the health risks.

I'll probably have another cold or something; my throat felt the familiar scratchy after going through those bags; a few of them had wet dirt and wall lining in them. Dang house fire. [It's] like cat litter.

After finding The Classic, and inspired by the successful sale of the Sonic Totem relic for $1,500 two weeks before, he listed the shirt on eBay for $12,000 minimum on 19 April 2017. He immediately snapped a photo of it, then posted it for the listing, not realizing that the mold growth evident in the picture would not entice sales. He later washed it and posted a new photo to eBay, replacing the original one.

The same shirt after being washed. The holes and other damages allegedly would've been fixed using the funds raised from the sale, according to Chris.

Later, he streamed a live Captain's Log to promote it, donning the shirt for the first time in years (having last worn it in 2009's CWC Personal Sonichu Presentation). Three days later, the auction ended at $25,100. The winning bidder did not pay.

Humorously, Chris fails to realize that $25,100 is a gross overestimate of how much money would be required to repair a piece of clothing, even those affected by water damage.

Restoration effort

“	Beyond Help	”
Multiple tailors and cleaners, upon seeing the shirt, according to Chris.

“	Could any of you haters sew any better? The hole was large; I sewed as good as possible, then I reinforced the latter with the patch covers. If anything, this not only keeps it as iconic, but marks it as another masterpiece from myself, making it worth more.	”
Chris, 29 April 2017, on his effort to restore the shirt.

A "masterpiece." Note the poorly-color matched stitching on the arm, with the white thread not fitting the faded white stripes on the shirt at all.

Chris began an effort to restore the shirt on 29 April 2017. The shirt had sustained large tears as a result of neglect. He asked several professional tailors to repair it; however, they turned down the job as being too difficult. Undeterred, Chris set out to fix it himself.

He recorded 90 minutes of him sewing up the shirt and posted several before-and-after photos to Twitter.

A commentator on Kiwi Farms noted the issues with his project. These included:

• Using an incorrect type of needle (Chris used tapestry needles, which have a blunt end and not a sharp, pointed one)
• Using patches which are incompatible with the shirt (Chris used a even-weave cotton patch, which would cause that area to not stretch well, instead of a proper double-knit patch)
• Not trying to color-match the new thread with the shirt's colors
• Not taking measures to prevent frays or shrinkage
• Not applying the patching to the inside of the shirt

After "a few hours" of work, Chris declared his effort a "masterpiece" and said The Classic is "worth more" because of it. At the time of that statement, he believed he had already made a sale on it for $25,100.

On 4 May, after five days of work, Chris completed the restoration. He signed it, and celebrated the job by wearing it in public.

Chris noting the decayed shirt in a page of the BronyCon 2018 gift comics

By 2018, the shirt deteriorated further. Chris attended TooManyGames with the shirt in June of that year, with photographs of him wearing it at the event showing the shirt practically falling apart, and some of the stitching Chris had attempted to carry out having split or frayed in places. On 4 July, he posted to Twitter asking for Ralph Lauren's help in either reproducing or restoring his shirt. This did not come to pass, and Chris would still regularly wear the rapidly-degrading fabric. By this point, it would be easier to just buy a new one than attempt to repair it.

Loss

On 10 August 2018, Chris revealed in a text message to the Teen Troon Squad that The Classic was lost by his mother cleaning his room while he was away at BronyCon. Chris responded by hitting and humping a pillow effigy representing his mother in front of her. He would then search for a replacement, which is first seen during the Dimensional Merge Announcements video.

Replicas

On 21 December 2023, in what can only be described as a true and honest Christmas Miracle, Chris was spotted wearing what appeared to be a near-perfect replica of The Classic while having dinner with Flutter. This marked the first time he was seen wearing it in over five years. Later, in January 2024, Chris wore the replica Classic shirt during an interview with Keffals. The replica lacks the thin white stripes of the original shirt, but otherwise appears virtually identical.

As of March 2025, Chris owns a shirt that looks closer to the original Classic, including the white stripes. He has worn it on a couple of videos so far. Chris has said that the shirt "isn't accurate", mentioning how it doesn't have a crest like the original Ralph Lauren design, so he's looking into getting another replacement.

Short-sleeved variant

Circa 2005 Chris also wore a short-sleeved shirt with a very similar design but with more stripes. The shirt was much too small for him, even more so than his other shirts. Fortunately he always wore it with another shirt underneath. The shirt's current fate is unknown. Chris notably wore the shirt in Chris Chan creepy smile.

Gallery

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  An illustration of The Classic

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  Chris's first self-portrait in the Classic, drawn on or before 2 February 2004.

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  Chris's earliest known picture wearing the Classic, 2004.

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  A picture taken some point before or after the previous one.

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  The internet's first glimpse of The Classic.

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  2005.

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  The short-sleeved clown shirt in 2005.

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  Another picture in the short-sleeved shirt, December 2005.

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  2006.

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  2007.

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  2009.

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  The horribly worn-out shirt in 2017.

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  Another photo of the shirt in 2017.

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  ... and another.

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  "Restored."

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  In public.

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  Back view.

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  Promoting his Patreon and Redbubble in October 2017.

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  2018. Chris wore the shirt to MAGfest.

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  Seen with Chris and a Sonichu standee at TooManyGames, 2018. By this point, several areas of Chris's stitching had burst or been torn open due to their poor condition.

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  4th of July, looking like a homeless person. Note the large tear in the sleeve, as well as the rip in his skirt.

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  Chris's TSSSF card for the classic.

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  Could it be..?

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  It's a miracle!

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  January 2025.

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  It's evolving.