Field shirt in uniform melton in lead grey
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Buying
£290.00
Field shirt, made in London, with a sturdy (24oz) melton from a mill in West Yorkshire, and with dark horn buttons from the Midlands.
Sizing
This version of the field shirt fits true to size. The mannequin here — the most standard 38 chest on Planet Earth — is wearing a size S.
| XS | S | M | L | XL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| To fit chest | 36 | 38 | 40 | 42 | 44 |
| Pit-to-pit | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| Back length | 30½ | 30¾ | 31 | 31¼ | 31½ |
| Sleeve from centre-back | 33¼ | 33¾ | 34¼ | 34¾ | 35¼ |
Caring
Since the field shirt here is entirely woollen, dry-cleaning is the only way to keep it fresh and sparkly. The cloth, however, is exceptionally dirt and grime-resistant, and so need not be cleaned more than, say, once a year.
The field shirt is an unstructured shirt or structured jacket, depending on where you draw the line. It is, either way, your quintessential mid-layer. It is suitable over a shirt or t-shirt — with a capacious cut in the upper body — but is unlined and bulk-free, so can be sandwiched between your shirt and jacket.
The collar of the field shirt sits atop a full collar-stand, which itself has grown onto it a short throat tab. The tab is probably happiest undone — it isn't so long that it ever mopes around aimlessly — but can be whipped across to the opposite side to keep out the wind, or buttoned back on itself, out of sight.
The buttons are horn, and are dark in colour and matte in finish. Being as they're only a step or two from nature, each one is different, in terms of shade and marking. Those at the front are attached through eyelets and a metal ring — "butcher's buttons", sometimes they are called — and are thus removable.
There are two pockets on the field shirt, both at the chest. They are built into the chest-spanning seam that stems, in point of pattern-cutting fact, from the sleeve. One is a bellows patch; the other is an in-seam pocket, the stitching for which mirrors its counterpart. Bar-tacks strengthen the entranceways of both.
There's no shoulder seam on the field shirt. No raglan, no in-set, no nothing. The absence of a seam means that the field shirt has the softest imaginable shoulder: for better or worse, it rolls over the natural lines of the wearer.
The cuffs are unusually slim: more coat-like in styling than shirt. They fasten with the help of an arrow-tipped tab and button. The relatively wide sleeve is pulled into this cuff with the the force of a gusset and the grace of a pleat — although the cuff is quite wide so the shirt is easily slipped off and on.
Melton doesn't get more marbled than this. Look at this — a tangled, gnarled surface of soft grey yarn, milled to just the right degree so it is compact and firm, without losing its flow and drape. Hard-wearing, too, hailing as it does from a mill that has supplied the military with such stuff for 200 years.
As worn
The gent here is just north of a 38 chest, and is wearing the field shirt in size S. He should consider going up a size if he wants to wear it as more of a mid-layer or jacket, rather than in the shirt-style that he here has assumed.
Makers of
The field shirt is made by a coat factory in north London. Note: not a shirt factory. Rather than being made like a shirt but with heavier cloth, the field shirt is made to the same standards, and with much the same structure, as the most robust outerwear, with heavy fusing and turned seams and the like.
The wool lining hails from a mill founded in the Heavy Woollen District of West Yorkshire in the 1800s. Carding, blending, spinning, and weaving — it all happens on the same premises. This unique arrangement means that the fleece’s change into top-grade cloth could not be more tightly tuned.
The horn buttons were cut, shaped, and polished by the last such factory in Britain (now defunct). It was part of a tradition in the Midlands first linked to the meat industry of the 18th century. "It is no easy task," said William Hutton in 1780, "to enumerate the infinite diversity of buttons here in Birmingham."
So they say
I like to wear my field shirt over a shirt. Perfect fit. I like the heaviness and thickness of the linen. Simply wow. Thanks.
Spoken by a gent in Japan who bought the field shirt in very heavy linen in March 2018.