Most men do not know how a dress shirt should properly fit. Also, most off-the-rack men's dress shirts never fit right because standard sizes are set up to fit 'well enough.'
Here are a few ways to tell if your men's dress shirts fit:
1. You can comfortably button up your collar without choking yourself. The collar should be big enough for you to slip in a finger or two, and should not feel tight. It should not feel loose either.
2. The sleeve length is perfect when your dress shirt's cuffs just end at your wrists when your arms are at your sides.
3. The dress shirt's cuff is only a little bit wider than your wrist, but not wide enough that you can pull your hand through your cuff without unbuttoning.
4. The chest circumference of your men's dress shirt fits right if you can comfortably move your arms without too much restriction, and the seams connecting the body of the shirt to the sleeves are resting on your shoulders, not above your bicep.
5. The girth (waist) of your dress shirt is only a few inches larger, circumference-wise, than you are. This way, there isn't excess baggage from your dress shirt around your waist when your shirt's tucked in, and that it's not so tight that your seams are close to splitting. When baggy dress shirts are tucked in, they give the impression that you have a muffin-top, regardless of if you're an athlete at 170lbs or a lean 135lb man.
6. The dress shirt is long enough to fit your preference, whatever that may be. There are special dress shirts that are meant only to be worn tucked in, others that are only meant to be worn untucked, while some are long enough but short enough to wear either way.
Most dress shirts you buy at your normal retail store will not give you the fit that you need. For me, I would never buy a dress shirt unless it was slim fit with a 14-14 1/2 collar size. Finding a shirt with those size preferences was a nightmare though. The market was 'too small' for all big retailers to serve. A slim fit dress shirt with a 14-14 1/2 collar would fit perfectly in all areas except the collar. I truly needed a collar that was 15-15 1/2, but shirts that came with that collar size were too big in ALL other areas. In my old shopping days, I had to compromise the fit of my collar to have a fit that worked on every other part of my dress shirt. But you shouldn't compromise your comfort and style (I was never able to button the top button without feeling like someone was choking me, and I couldn't comfortably wear a tie this way either) by buying just any dress shirt off-the-rack. Shoot for bespoke tailoring, or get custom men's dress shirts that you designed with the perfect fit in mind. You can start designing your own dress shirts online with our dress shirt design app now.
This post was written by Danny Wong for the co-creation blog, trying to convince men to adopt co-creation and forget about buying off-the-rack.
