Shirt with button-down collar in grey desert cotton

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£120.00 — ex VAT

Shirt with a button-down collar, made in London, with desert cotton from Lancashire and dark horn buttons from the Midlands.

Sizing

The shirt fits true to size, and thus the mannequin — the most standard 38 chest in all the world — wears size S. The shirt is cut in a relaxed, casual way, and is best worn untucked.

XS S M L XL
To fit chest 36 38 40 42 44
Collar 14½ 15 15½ 16 16½
Pit-to-pit 19 20 21 22 23
Shoulder 17 17½ 18 18½ 19
Sleeves 24 24½ 25 25½ 26
Back length 28½ 28½ 29 29½ 30
What you have here is a shirt with a straight-cut body, medium length, and a button-down collar. The collar is a mite smaller than most, and has curved edges. The collar buttons are positioned high, such that, when fastened, there is a satisfying bulge around the collar — what some call the "collar roll".
On the left-side as worn, the shirt has a chest pocket of medium-to-large size. The pocket has a pen, pencil, or scalpel compartment, which is established with a simple, single bartack (see right). Such stitches also appear at the top corners of the pocket, helping to make it a little more strong and durable.
The shirt has a front of eight bona-fide horn buttons. Being as they are an entirely natural thing, each looks different to the next, varying in tone and hue and striatic markings. The cuffs (below) have curved corners, and each has two buttons (in the image below, the loosest of these buttons is fastened).
The shirt has French seams — uncommon for a shirt: it takes more time and is more tricky to accomplish. The benefit: it makes seams much stronger, and thus the shirt much more long-lasting. It also looks better, with a satisfyingly thick seam on the outside, and the most tidy appearance within.
This is desert cotton — that is to say, cotton with a hint of linen, hence the slubby appearance. It is very impressive stuff. Thick. Lightweight. Breathable. Dry. Hard-wearing and abrasion-proof. When new, crisp and rigid; when washed, softer and softer and softer; over time holding the shape of the wearer.

As worn

The gent here is 5'9" and is wearing size S. He has a chest size of 38", and there are reports — neither confirmed nor denied — that he weighs in just below 12 stone.

Makers of

The shirt is made by a shirt-maker in north London. They make shirts and only shirts all day, every day, and so have developed something of a knack for it. They make with time-consuming but strong single-needle lock-stitch seams, and with an out-of-vogue dedication to older "how shirts used to be made" contraptions.
The cloth is supplied by a mill in east Lancashire: in a region of the country which was once red-brick cotton-mill chimneys as far as the eye could see. More or less the last of its kind, the mill has forgotten more about cotton than most will ever know — a fact borne out by the quality of its work.
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 made in Birmingham."