My serious suit and tie dress shirt of choice is a slim fit with a semi-spread collar and French cuffs in regular cotton (NEVER no-iron/wrinkle-free). But for casual modes on the weekend, I love white pinpoint oxford shirts with a button-down collar. They’re perfect with jeans, chinos or even shorts outside of the city. I have four of them, all identical, and count them among my favorite garments in my entire wardrobe.
The ones I like are from Paul Fredrick, made with a terrific pinpoint oxford cloth and cut with a high collar that looks great with a casual jacket, with a sweater or all by itself. I never send them to the cleaners, preferring to just wash them and let them hang dry for a deliberately wrinkled and “tossed” look – an effect you cannot get with wrinkle-free cotton. I rarely wear them with a tie, but when I do it’s in a strictly casual vibe. They feel fantastic, wear very well and only get better with time.
Paul Fredrick has them available on their main website for $69 each or $109 for three shirts, which is a great deal as it is. But on a secret web address (which just might get shut down if this post gets any traction), Paul Fredrick has a special “introductory” offer of 4 shirts for $100. They even throw in monogramming!
On that secret introductory page, there are several options for shirt configurations like collar, fit, cuff, etc. Here’s how I order mine:
- Pinpoint Oxford cloth
- Trim fit
- Button-Down Collar
- Barrel (“Button”) cuff
- Monogram (“GJH” in navy block letters on the cuff)
$100 and a few days later, they arrive at my door and head straight to the laundry room for a warm water wash and a hang dry. And if I get busted for using the secret web page, I consider the standard 3-for-$109 just fine.
Paul Fredrick: paulfredrick.com
Introductory Offer: paulfredrick.com/intropage
Here are some Instagram photos of me in mine…
6 Comments
Thanks, George. Just ordered four ( 4 ) . Tony.
How would you deem the fit on the “trend/slim fit” with regards to other popular brands? Often feel the american market has WAY larger “slim fit” (which is actually more like a casual fit in European terms. Thankful for your response.
I know what you mean. The Paul Fredrick trim fit is a pretty fair slim. Not skin-tight sausage casing fit. A healthy slim fit that enables movement.
Hi George, I live in UK and until now, the only pinpoint button down like this I found is in Tyrwhitt, but it’s non iron 🙁
Any chance you’d know where to get some similar from UK?
Ugh about the non-iron-only ones from Tyrwhitt. This wrinkle-free trend drives me nuts. Are Paul Fredrick shirts not available in the UK? Otherwise, I wouldn’t know where to go.
George,
Largely on the recommendation of this and other posts, I recently commissioned a white pinpoint oxford cloth shirt of my own to try out (I am currently living in Hong Kong, and so have easy access to good tailors to get them custom made for a quite reasonable price). Today is my first day wearing it, and you are absolutely right. I am wearing it by itself (i.e., not under a jacket, but sleeves rolled up, unbuttoned to the third button, etc.), and it looks and feels fantastic as a dressy casual shirt. Before this, my preferred shirt cloth was royal or French oxford, but this pinpoint really does look and feel great.
Also, this shirt is remarkably cool to wear in hot weather. I can’t find where you talked about this aspect, whether on your blog or in your videos, but I swear you did somewhere, and it is absolutely true. Today it has been 86 degrees with humidity in the high 70s (which, according to my phone’s weather app gave a RealFeel of 105 degrees), but my walk to the coffeeshop was not unpleasant, and I didn’t arrive and break out in puddles of sweat. I had previously worn very light end-on-end chambray shirts on similar days, and the results were not good. Even though this fabric is heavier, somehow it seems to wear much cooler, and does not show whatever sweat may have arisen nearly as much as that end-on-end, and seems to dissipate body heat much more efficiently. From this experiment, I may end up ordering more pinpoint shirts in a couple different colors.
You also say that these shirts improve with wear, so I can’t wait to enjoy that aspect as well.
Thanks again for your time and effort to provide practical recommendations like this, and just your thoughts in general about so many things style and lifestyle related.