Shirt Placket or No Shirt Placket?
Dress shirts are made with a placket or without. I prefer the former.
For the Love of Broadcloth
The myriad of dress shirt fabric options can be overwhelming. Cotton broadcloth ticks all the boxes for me.
My Favorite Shirt Company Killed the Placket
When a company you like makes a product you love, and then changes the product, it's a boner killer.
The Wonder of Elastic Arm Bands
In a perfect wardrobe, all the shirts and jackets have a perfect sleeve length that reveal that ideal one-quarter to one-half inch of shirt cuff. But if you haven’t brought the shirts to the tailor, or if the shirt is new and hasn’t shrunk to size yet, there is a solution to “shortening” shirt sleeves: elastic arm bands.
In Praise of the Unfused Dress Shirt Collar
One of my pet peeves with the average dress shirt is the fused collar. A fused collar is one that undergoes a high heat process that fuses multiple layers of fabric together, producing a collar that looks and feels perpetually starched, whether it’s been ironed or not. It’s fine, and I tolerate it. But I’ve grown to appreciate (and even favor) a non-fused collar. It’s not so stiff looking, lending a more relaxed, confident and cooler nonchalance to an otherwise crisp look.
My Dress Shirt Solutions
Until years ago, my dress shirts were almost exclusively from Brooks Brothers. Aside from their long (and now lost) heritage with dress shirts, they had a great fit and wonderful fabric until they went down the no-iron/wrinkle-free rabbit hole. Wrinkle-free is the crystal meth of menswear. Since my distaste for the substandard, formaldehyde-soaked, toxic, no-iron phenomenon is no secret, even earning me a quote in the Wall Street Journal, Brooks Brothers completely lost my business.
My preferred collar and cuff combination for dress shirts is a semi-spread collar with French cuffs. Same with my formal shirts. For handsome, well-made, affordable dress shirts, where to go?
Episode 33: Quoted in The Wall Street Journal and Appreciating a Little Analog in the Digital Age
In this episode of the podcast, I share about the distinct pleasure of being quoted in The Wall Street Journal this past weekend in an article about non-iron dress shirts. In the first paragraph, you’ll learn that I loathe non-iron dress shirts and that I apparently “sniff.” (And if you scroll down to the comments section, you’ll see the added bonus of one reader calling me an “arrogant twit.” How does he know me??) Read the article.
Also in this episode, I share my appreciation of some of the old-fashioned things. As much as I love technology and fully embrace our digital age, there are certain aspects of my life that remain decidedly analog.
A Shout-Out to Real Cotton Dress Shirts
https://youtu.be/KzxtfTKaXvE On this super hot day today, I was noticing how good a nice real cotton dress shirt felt, even in the blistering heat. Wrinkle-free/no-iron dress shirts do not breathe like this. Demand real, untreated, 100% cotton. It's the only…
End-on-End Shirt Cloth
One of my favorite shirt cloth weaves is end-on-end. It combines alternating light and dark threads to produce the look of a solid from a distance but a nice rich texture up close.
Charles Tyrwhitt’s Return to Real Cotton White Dress Shirts
Non-iron cotton is the death of dress shirts. Any semi-serious sartorialist who appreciates real soft cotton that breathes would have nothing to do with these formaldehyde-soaked (and potentially toxic) Frankenshirts. The wash/dry/wear convenience of non-iron shirts has made them extremely popular and very profitable for shirt makers. These days, it seems you have to go on a black-ops covert mission to find a handsome, affordable and well-made white dress shirt made with real cotton. Even trusted brands like our stalwart Brooks Brothers have gone as far as making regular cotton shirts unavailable entirely, at least for any reasonable cost.