Mens Fashion Tips: Things to Know About Your Dress Shirts

You might not have noticed it before, but shirts can be made from an extensive variety of fabrics and materials. Blends of cotton and polyester are some of the most common you would find in shirts; they are the ones you would commonly find for about $20 a pop in department stores. When you are buying shirts, expect to get only the quality you pay for. Dont think that a $30 polyester blend shirt will give the same of comfort as a $100 premium silk blend product from a known maker.

Cotton: The Champion of Cloths
Despite the fact that it seems so common, cotton remains one of the best fabrics you could get for your shirt. If you get a high enough quality of cotton, that is. High-quality cotton blends are some of the choicest and most comfortable fabrics that you could get for your shirt. In addition to their softness, premium cotton shirts are also relatively cool; you could expect to wear them anywhere from North America to the sweltering heat in the Asian tropical countries.

Synthetic fibers have become very popular with shirt makers in the last couple of decades, mostly because special properties can be introduced into them. Many synthetic fabrics, for example, were designed to better resist wrinkles a fantastic find for frequent flyers. If you want to get the best of both worlds, a cotton-synthetic fabric blend would be a good idea. Just be sure to ask for combinations that are at least half cotton so that you still end up with a comfy shirt.

The Finer Fabrics
If you want the best quality shirts, go to premium shirt makers like Charvet, made in France or Turnbull & Asser, made in the United States and ask for poplin. Poplin is a fabric that is almost entirely cotton, made with very fine horizontal ribbing on the surface. It is a very fine material that is used for only the best shirts. Sea Island poplin is recognized as the best and consequently the most expensive variety, so specify that if you demand for nothing but the top of the line.

Pima is another high-quality option that you will likely find only at premium retailers and shirt makers. Like poplin, the fineness of Pima comes from the longer-than-usual staples of cotton used in production. Unlike poplin, though, the yarns of Pima are smooth, giving a smoother finish to the shirt itself. Visually, Pima also looks more expensive than poplin because it has a distinctive luster as well as an excellent ability to retain color.

The Best of Broadcloth
An entire group of fabrics called broadcloths are also commonly used for making shirts. It refers to fabrics that have a very tight weave made from finely spun yarns. This gives an external appearance that is very silky and lustrous. Broadcloths, however, feel coarser and rougher to the wearer than does Pima or poplin.

Pin-point Oxford, a variant of the broadcloth, uses a tighter broadcloth weave with slightly thicker yarns. While it turns out for a comparatively coarser and thicker shirt, a pin-point Oxford shirt still weighs less than the typical Oxford.

Shirts are actually a very diverse category of clothing, and you would do well to acquaint yourself with them as early as possible. Knowing just the kind of shirt to wear for the occasion could make or break your outfit for the office or an event.

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