Men's Dress Shirts

Index - Men's Dress Shirts:

1. Collar Styles

2. Front Styles

3. Features of a High Quality Dress Shirt

4. Fabrics for Dress Shirts

5. Fitting Advice

6. Shopping

The dress shirt is one of the most important garments for your evening wear.

You can choose different styles from sporty to elegant, but without a man's dress shirt, each evening outfit would be incomplete.

A dress shirt that fits properly flatters a man's physique and looks very handsome.

However, a lot of dress shirts are available on the market with bad workmanship and an even worse fit.

In this section, you will learn to buy a good, fitted, high quality men's dress shirt.

You will get information about different fabrics and various collar types.

Also, you will get advice for the correct fit, and we will introduce you to the best stores for men's dress shirts on the net.

Men's dress shirts - Collar Styles

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Men's dress shirts - Front Styles

front styles 2, men's dress shirts,shirts

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Features of a High Quality Men's Dress Shirt

Collar stiffener;

Depending on the collar style, a good quality dress shirt has collar stiffeners that can be taken out when you clean or iron your shirt.

They are necessary for turn down collars and cutaway collars (spread collars).

However, they would be out of place for the soft collar of a button down shirt.

Most collar stiffeners are made of plastic, but some shirt manufacturers offer them in brass.

Stiffeners adjust the collar to the proper shape without allowing the collar peaks to stand away from the neck, especially if you wear your dress shirt with a neck tie.

Separated back yoke;

The separated men's back yoke comes from the traditional tailored workmanship of men's apparel.

Because every person has shoulders of different heights, you can fit the shirt with a separated back yoke accurate for his individual build.

For manufactured dress shirts, this is a detail that suggests expensive workmanship.

You will only get a customized separated back yoke if you buy a custom tailored men's dress shirt.

Correct fitted pattern run;

A high quality men's dress shirt should always have a fitted run of the pattern or stripes.

In other words, the pattern or stripes of the material should match in areas where two pieces of material meet much like the pattern of wallpaper should match where two pieces meet.

You should pay special attention to the areas where the sleeves, the yokes, and the cuffs are attached.

If you have a men's shirt with an attached button panel you should also pay attention to this very important area.

The stripes or checks should always continue as if it were a seamless piece of material at the crossings.

Amount of stitches in a seam;

You can determine the quality of a men's dress shirt by the amount of stitches in a seam.

If the distance from one stitch to the next stitch is small, the seam is more durable.

Long distances between stitches are used in manufacturing because they use less thread and result in a faster sewing speed.

So, a shirt with a smaller stitch distance will cost more time and money in production, but the seam will have better quality and last longer.

A good shirt seam has approximately 8 stitches in 1 centimeter, which is equivalent to 20 stitches in 1 inch.

Felled seams;

A good quality men's dress shirt has felled seams, which are seams made by turning under or folding together and stitching the seamed materials to avoid rough edges.

Therefore, you can not see the cutting edge of the fabric if the single parts are sewn together.

Cheaper men's dress shirts have a trimmed seam on the cutting edges, which does not look very nice if you turn up your sleeve cuffs because you can see the trimmed seam.

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Fabrics for Men's Dress Shirts

Cotton batiste (cambric );

This is a light weight 1 x 1 weave fabric using fine high quality yarns.

Poplin:

This is a common name for shirt fabric with thicker weft than warp threads.

The thicker weft threads give this fabric its characteristic fine horizontal ribbed effect on the surface.

Sea island poplin;

This is the most expensive and finest cotton fabric available.

The use of more threads when weaving this fabric provides its silky-smooth touch.

Stripes and checks appear more clearly, and the colors are deeper.

Because of this fact, sea island poplin is perfect for flashy patterns.

Oxford;

This is a coarser weaved fabric for soft and wear-resistant men's dress shirts.

In this fabric, the warp threads are connected pair-wise with different coloured weft threads, which results in a surface that appears to consist of small cubes.

Royal oxford;

This is higher quality type of oxford fabric.

A men's dress shirt made out of royal oxford has a much softer and silky-smooth touch than a shirt made of regular oxford fabric.

Ribbed Twill;

This fabric has a characteristic diagonal structure.

The typical shimmery appearance gives plain colored men's dress shirts an interesting look.

Herringbone twill;

This fabric is strongly related to ribbed twill.

The threads are weaved in a diagonal structure for both fabrics.

To obtain the typical herringbone effect, weavers change the direction of the structure approximately each centimeter, which creates a zigzag pattern.

Pin-point;

This fabric is a mixture of cotton-poplin and oxford.

It is weaved out of long stapled cotton, and only the warp thread is colored as in oxford fabric.

Silk;

This is a very expensive fabric for men's dress shirts.

It is a very light material with a cool touch and a distinctive look.

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Men's dress shirts - Fitting Advice

Collar:

The collar of the shirt should end at the middle of the neck and lie flat.

If you close the top button, you should feel comfortable around your throat, and there should be no straining.

If you want to wear a tie with your shirt you should attend that the collar doesn`t fit too loose.

Shoulders:

The shoulder seam should run flat along your shoulder and should end at the point where your collarbone ends (this applies to a regular shirt style).

Breast:

If you close the buttons of your shirt, there should be no pulling around the buttons.

If there is any pulling around the breasts or under the arms, the shirt is too small.

Body:

There should be no pulling across the upper back, upper arms, or chest.

To see if the dress shirt fits comfortably, you should cross your arms in front of you, raise them up over your head, and try sitting down.

The side seams should have a straight, smooth run from the underarm to the hem, without any puckering or pulling.

Sleeves:

When your hands hang at your side and your arm is slightly bent, the sleeves should just cover your wrist bone.

Generally the sleeve should be wide enough so that you can move your arms freely without disturbing the fit of the body part of the shirt.

Some sleeve constructions are so tightly shaped that it is impossible to be really comfortable when you move your arms.

Hem / Length:

For your evening wear you should usually wear your shirt inside the waistband of your trouser.

If you are tucking it in, the shirt should be long enough so that you can sit down and raise your arms without pulling the sides of the shirt outside the waistband of your trouser

If you don`t tuck the shirt in, you should choose the length which is most fashionable for your figure.

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