A man that doesn’t have at least one dress shirt at his dis­posal, needs to take a hard look at his wardrobe and won­der where he went wrong. A dress shirt can be worn in many sit­u­a­tions, never fail­ing but help­ing your appear­ance and the impres­sion you make. It can give you pol­ish and dig­nity when the jeans are faded and the beard scruffy.

Unfor­tu­nately, none of this mat­ters if it doesn’t fit right. The first step, and prob­a­bly the most over­looked, is find­ing a dress shirt that fits you prop­erly. Your actions reflect how you feel, so get­ting a dress shirt that’s com­fort­able and fits prop­erly is of the utmost impor­tance. Also, since you’re spend­ing good money, expect­ing it to last awhile, you def­i­nitely want to get the right size.

If you’re brows­ing at a depart­ment store and not sure of your mea­sure­ments, have one of the store clerks size you up. That’s what they’re there for. They’ll let you know your neck and sleeve mea­sure­ments. The neck is mea­sured around the neck just below the Adam’s apple but add a 1/2 inch for com­fort. Your sleeve length is given from the cen­ter back of your neck, over the top of your shoul­der and down to your wrist, arm hang­ing at your side. For the sake of con­ve­nience regard­ing neck size, 14.5″ is a small, 15″ and 15.5″ is a medium and 16″ and 16.5″ con­sid­ered a large.

Make sure to try on your dress shirt as all design­ers have dif­fer­ent siz­ing quirks. The neck and the shoul­ders should be checked first. The seam that con­nects the shoul­der to the sleeve should come close or barely over to the end of your shoul­der, allow­ing it to drape well. The shirt shouldn’t stretch across the chest. Also, the sleeves should end slightly past the break of the wrist so it can be seen beneath a suit coat.

I’d rec­om­mend find­ing a slim fit­ted shirt because it’s much eas­ier to tuck in and stay tucked, along with giv­ing a slim­mer appear­ance. You don’t want it to bil­low like a ship’s sail out to sea. This gives a sloppy appear­ance, los­ing any dig­nity the dress shirt can eas­ily pro­vide. One thing to keep in mind, is if the col­lar and shoul­der is fine but the sleeves long, you can get it tai­lored, along with taper­ing in the shirt if it puffs out too much.

We talked about dress shirt fab­rics already, so I won’t get into that. To spare you the headache, how­ever, of depart­ment store brows­ing and spend­ing extra on tai­lor­ing, I’d rec­om­mend you try out our online cus­tom dress shirt process. You can use the gen­eral mea­sure­ments sug­gested above or input exact mea­sure­ments from a well fit­ted dress shirt you already own. Your best bet is to start from scratch with a mea­sur­ing tape. Here’s how you can mea­sure your­self.

Regard­less, if you choose online or at the store, make sure you get the fit that makes you look your best. If you don’t wear a dress shirt to work, it will still come in handy on the week­end or any sur­prise appear­ances requir­ing an impres­sion. Make that impres­sion the right one with the right fit.

Return to our home­page to learn more about cus­tom dress shirts.

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Categories: Men's Dress Shirt Guide

Tags: custom dress shirt, Deo Veritas, dress shirt fitting guide, how to measure dress shirt, Johnny Depp, measure length, mens fitted dress shirt, mens slim dress shirt, online tailor, shirt sizes, tailored dress shirt