A Deeper Understanding of Dress Shirts

A Deeper Understanding of Dress Shirts

A lot of details go into the construction of a men's dress shirt, and the more attention one pays to these, the better results one can achieve in purchasing and wearing one. 

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In retail stores, usually men's shirts are sized by collar circumference and sleeve length. Since it is “standard size” for “not-so-standard figures”, most men will agree that it is difficult to find a perfect fitting dress shirt from ready-to-wear brands. If custom-made is not an option, the best bet is to try on a lot of shirts until one finds a particular size of a particular brand that fits him well, then stick to this size of this brand, buying as many colors and patterns of these as he wants.

Aside from fabric and fit, a man has a few matters of construction to consider when picking out or ordering a shirt: collar, cuffs, pocket, placket and pleats. Last but not the least, monogram is an emphasized personal touch of your perfect fitting dress shirt.

Shirt Collars
Shirt collar is the most important, both in determining the garment's level of formality and in flattering the wearer's unique face. Other than classic collar, Italian collar is also very popular these days. Button-down collars are the least formal, and are the best collars to wear without a tie. They also go well with a tie and sweater, blazer, or sport coat. The wing collar, which does not cover the band of the tie around the neck, is reserved for formal wear. 

Shirt Cuffs
Button cuffs, standard on most dress shirts, are never the wrong choice. They come in a variety like angled, square or rounded. The common variety has a single button; cuffs with two or even three buttons are somewhat more artful. French cuffs are for formal wear; they look elegant & dressy along with a suitable choice of cufflinks.

A small button in the sleeve placket helps the sleeve to stay closed during wearing and can be opened to iron the cuffs.

Shirt Pocket
The traditional left breast pocket adds a little depth to a dress shirt, especially if worn without jacket and tie, and can be useful for holding pens, tickets, and the like. A shirt with no pockets can look slightly cleaner with a coat and tie. But the difference is minimal. As with most things, simplicity equals formality, so the pocket less shirt is the dressiest.

Shirt Placket
The placket is the edge of the left front panel, with the button holes on it. The standard placket is a strip of fabric raised off the men's dress shirt front with stitches down each side; this is what most casual shirts and many dress shirts have. In the more modern French placket (seamless placket), the edge of the shirt front is folded over, creased, and held together only by the button holes. This cleaner front sharpens more formal dress shirts.

Shirt Pleats
A man's back is not flat; thus we use pleats on the back panel of a shirt so that the fabric may hang from the yoke (the piece covering the shoulder blades) and better conform to the body. There are two common varieties of pleated shirt back styles: the box pleat consists of two pleats spaced one-and-a-half inches apart at the center, while side pleats lie halfway between each edge and the center of the back. While the former are more common on ready-to-wear shirts, the latter better align with the actual shape of the back, and thus fit most men better. A well-made custom shirt can be cut and sewn to fit its wearer perfectly without pleats, and this makes it cleaner and easier to iron. Nonetheless, many men prefer to have pleats even on their bespoke dress shirts.

Monograms
Finally, a man may have his shirt monogrammed, usually on the edge of the pocket (or in a similar place on a pocket less shirt), or on the left cuff. Monogramming originated as a way to identify one's shirts in a commercial laundry, just like writing a child's name on the tag of their jacket. More recently, as the shirt has taken a more prominent role in men's dress, the monogram has emerged as a way to subtly communicate the care a man has taken in his personal image. While large, garish monograms certainly do more harm than good, many men enjoy the quiet display of their initials, usually in a color similar to the shirt's own.