Everything You Need to Know About Choosing the Perfect Dress Shirt
Shirts for men can be tricky. Most of us grow up with a very liberal attitude towards dress shirts, especially when it comes to fit and length. If you wear loose shirts, it can look a little sloppy, but when you’re younger, you don’t care too much about looking a little sloppy, unless you’re one of those weird Sheldon Cooper types who cares. But then you get to an age where the scruffy look no longer indicates that I’m a cool bohemian who doesn’t care about social conventions , but rather signals that I’ve taken my hand off the steering wheel of my life and have no idea what I’m doing. At the same time, the business world is becoming more welcoming to untucked shirts, but if your shirt serves as a nightgown, it’s not exactly a professional look.
The world of men’s shirts has become even more complex with the advent of unbuttoned shirts and an ever longer list of options. If all of this makes you feel like you need to get into some kind of dress shirt university, consider this your crash course. Here’s everything you need to know about buying the right size dress shirt.
What you need to know about dress shirt sizes
First of all, you need to choose the right shirt size. There are two main methods for determining the size of men’s shirts: alphabetic and numerical. The alpha is vague but comfortingly simple: these shirts come in small, medium, large, and all their variations (very large, etc.). The dimensions here are inaccurate, but fairly easy to understand.
However, you will find alpha size mostly on t-shirts; Most dress shirts use numerical sizes, which can usually be found on the collar. Usually these are three numbers in the format 16 33/34. The first number is the collar size in inches and the second number is the approximate length of the sleeve in inches. Numerical sizing allows for more precise sizing without the need for your shirts to be handcrafted in Italy after a full body laser scan.
You can measure your body to see what size shirt you need. Wrap a flexible tape measure around your neck and then insert one or two fingers to literally give yourself a break. This is your neck size; look for a shirt that is as close as possible to what you measured. When measuring sleeve length on your arms, the trick is to start at the bottom of your neck, not your shoulder, and then run the tape measure all the way to where the cuff should end on your wrist. Another trick? Measure both hands. They are probably not exactly the same length, so go for the larger measurement.
You can also measure your bust and waist, but most dress shirts bought from department stores and the like don’t offer this information on the label anyway, so it might not help much.
Choose the right dress shirt length
These days, dress shirts come in three main varieties: tucked, untucked, and blended. There are many cuts to choose from, but as a general rule, if your shirt has ponytails (a slightly curved part that hangs down at the back), it should be tucked in. A shirt meant to be worn loose will usually have a square hem, as opposed to the sloping or curved hem of tucked-in shirts, and will hang below your waist by a few inches with the same length all around. A hybrid length shirt can be worn tucked in or loose and will only cover the waist. When buying a hybrid length shirt from a store (as opposed to a tailored one), you will likely have to use trial and error to get the perfect length.
But what should this length be? Well, there is a certain science to it. Your first step is to find the point on your leg where the buttock ends and the thigh begins. This is a key location on your body and you can use it to determine the correct shirt length:
- Tucked: The hem of the shirt should extend about two inches past this point. In the front, it should go just below the bottom of the crotch of your pants, where the pants split into legs.
- Untucked: The back of the shirt should almost touch this spot, although it may extend slightly beyond. On the front, it should ideally not extend past the crotch, but there is some wiggle room here depending on your personal preference.
- Hybrid: As you can imagine, the ideal length for a hybrid dress shirt is somewhere in between the other two styles, about an inch below the buttocks in the back and about an inch above the crotch in the front.
That’s all you need to know. Of course, when it comes to clothing, there is often a vague “something” involved and some shirts of the same size just seem different. But knowing how to determine the size of a shirt will allow you to get as close as possible to the perfect cut without the participation of a tailor.