Men's shirts: building the rotation

Men’s Custom Shirts, Chiang Mai: order one, then order five

This is the single most useful piece of advice on this page and the most frequently ignored.

Visitors arrive, find a shop, like the cloth, and order five or six shirts at once because the price per shirt is appealing and the trip is short. If the pattern is right, that works out well. If it is not, they now own six shirts with the same fault.

Order one. Wear it, wash it once, and see how it sits at the end of a day. Then order the rest from the same pattern with any corrections applied. On a short trip this is still achievable, because shirts are the fastest garment in the shop.

If you are returning to Chiang Mai, it is even simpler: order one this trip, the rest next time, by which point the pattern is proven and on file.

Five is the number

For a five-day working week with weekly laundry, five shirts is the practical minimum.

It lets each shirt rest between wears, which matters more than people expect, since cotton recovers and creases settle. It also means the week’s washing happens in one cycle rather than mid-week, which is what actually wears shirts out through repeated laundering.

Seven gives comfortable margin. More than that is preference.

Colour, in order of usefulness

White, two or three. The most formal and the most versatile, correct under any suit colour, and the right choice for anything photographed or filmed.

Light blue, two or three. Slightly softer, flatters most complexions more than white does, and hides a long day marginally better.

Those two cover the great majority of what a shirt wardrobe needs.

Subtle stripes or checks come next, and their job is variety rather than utility. Keep the pattern small if the shirt goes under a patterned suit, since two competing patterns at the chest is the fastest way to look busy.

Where to spend

Two-ply cloth, every time, if the shirt is going into rotation. It resists the thinning and pilling at collar folds and cuff edges that shows up after dozens of washes, and it is the difference between a shirt lasting two years and five.

Thread count is heavily marketed and much less useful. See cotton for the argument in full.

Specify how it will be worn

A shirt worn under a jacket wants a slimmer sleeve so it does not bunch inside the jacket sleeve, and a collar cut high enough not to disappear under the lapel.

A shirt worn without one can take a fuller sleeve and a softer collar.

Say which at the order stage. See shirts for collar and cuff detail, and business shirts for the durability argument.