On change and other things
Think about the last time you actually thought about your internet speed. Not complained about it at someone else's place with their suspicious Wi-Fi. Actually thought about it — as a thing that changed, slowly, without even you realising it. You didn't. Because at some point, it got good enough that your complaints disappeared into the background of your day. That godawful buffering wheel became a distant memory. The three-minute download became three seconds. You moved on.
That's what quality-of-life upgrades do when they work. They just quietly remove a friction you'd normalised so completely you'd forgotten it was friction at all. And then one day, you're somewhere with slow internet, and you feel it like a splinter. When did I get so used to ‘better’?
I’m here to tell you that your innerwear selection is, unfortunately, still on dial-up.
The Upgrade You Keep Postponing
Here's the strange truth about how men dress: the closer something is to your body, the less thought it gets. You'll spend twenty minutes picking the right XYXX crew oversized t-shirt. You'll deliberate over sneakers. You'll think carefully about a watch. But then you'll reach into a drawer, pull out the same name-brand cotton brief you've been buying since college, and not give it another thought.
Until 4 pm. Until the heat has done what it does. Until the waistband has left that mark on your skin. That oh so familiar itch and that faint red line you know is slowly digging into your skin under your clothes. You feel it in a meeting, shifting slightly in your chair, making the small invisible adjustment you've made a thousand times and will make a thousand more.
This piece of writing isn't about luxury. It's not about spending more to feel expensive. It's about realising that some things got significantly better while you weren't paying attention, and making you see that every fabric has a time and place where they work best.
What fabric actually does
XYXX Modal is made from beech tree pulp. That technical part means nothing to you until you use it and realise what it actually feels like against your skin. What it feels like is the absence of effort. Lighter than your name-brand briefs. Softer through a long day, not just the first hour of it. It breathes; by 2 pm in a city that doesn't believe in mercy.
It doesn't stiffen through the afternoon. It doesn't slowly lose its shape over washes and become a slightly worse version of itself. It stays where it should, moves when you do, and doesn’t get lodged where it's not supposed to. The grip, the mark, the adjustment. It all quiets down because it's doing its job properly.
That's the upgrade. And on a hot April day, when you’re moving around the city, going from one meeting to another, it’s undeniably better.
Cotton Has Its Place. This Isn't It.
The worn-in XYXX cotton brief on a slow Sunday morning - curtains drawn, nowhere to be, the kind of day that asks nothing from you. Now, that comfort is king. Cotton built that feeling, and cotton owns it.
But a slow Sunday is not a twelve-hour Tuesday. It's not a client meeting in humidity that can't make up its mind. It's not the commute, the lunch, the 6 pm call that ran forty minutes over. Your name-brand brief wasn't built for that day. It was built for the other one, and it is excellent at being exactly that.
Modal is built for the day that demands work from you. The one where you need your clothes to get out of the way and stay there. Soft through the afternoon, still composed when cotton has long since creased and clung. It doesn't replace the Sunday brief. It covers the gap that briefs weren't meant to fill.
The upgrade was never about one fabric over another. It was about finally matching what you wear to what your day actually is.
Shop the XYXX Modal undies— and find out what your hectic Tuesdays have been missing.
BY UMAIRE EFFENDI...
About the author: Umaire Effendi is a writer and film & television professional with over a decade of experience across India and Canada. His cross-cultural background gives him a distinct lens on modern Indian lifestyle, one that understands how India doesn't just follow global culture, but absorbs it, integrates it, and sends something entirely new back out into the world. He writes about men's fashion and culture by taking things apart, the why behind what Indian men wear, and what it says about where we're headed.
