[col-sect][column]I wear a dress shirt everyday. Either solid black or solid white. And I’ve been doing so since the early 90’s. (Actually I was wearing dress shirts way back in high school… to go with my skinny black leather tie of course. Just to make that clear, that was the 80’s). In the 90’s the girls accused me of ironing my shirts and then crumpling them in a methodical and calculated way to achieve a certain casual appearance. *rolls eyes* But the wrinkles were legitimate: that’s how a shirt looks when you pick it up off the floor. Shortly after, around 2001 intentionally wrinkled dress shirts became fashionable and every meat head was wearing them to the bar. Aggravating.

Anyhoo, over all these years I’ve become very particular about dress shirt design, particularly general cut and collar details. Most shirts of decent quality these days have a standard boxy untailored cut, which is fine if you’re shaped with the proportions of a jumbo cereal box. Across the board, the same bulky cut. Or lack of cut actually. Boxy windbag shirts. It doesn’t help that the shirt buying process is inconvenient. If you go to Harry Rosen, a salesman will be on your ass in about a second and a half of you walking in the door, and he’ll follow you around, but doesn’t really want to get stuck dealing with merely a shirt buyer; he wants to sell big ticket items, like suits, or easier still, trench coats. That’s a low maintenance sale with a juicy sticker. So he’s not going to be too excited to endure your shirt pickiness, especially considering that each shirt is factory-folded, pinned and wrapped, requiring an involved and uncomfortable production to free out in order to humour your curiosity for the trying on of. Only to be re-wrapped when your suspicion about the shirt’s boxiness is confirmed and you don’t purchase. So you’re standing there waiting for him to take all the pins out, unbutton it, take he cardboard out of the collar etc.  It’s brutal. That’s not how a guy wants to shop. The system is designed so that you just take a shirt out of impatience or the unwillingness to take the abuse of the moment having a 55 year old guy in a Brioni suit grumble under his breath as he untangles a fine shirt and then hands it to you as you wait outside the dressing room. How many of those are you going to ask him to unwrap before you just buy one to end the charade? And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why fellas are walking around in poorly fitted shirts. As Steve McQueen once said as Thomas Crown, “It’s the system”. 

And I love how these shirts are identified and organized by particular size. But only collar size and sleeve length! Because geez, every guy has the same body shape, right. So, yeah, you nail those two variables down, and it’s ok that you’re still swimming in this huge parachute that fits you perfectly at the neck and sleeve. Nice. 

Having a personal sense of style means discerning which variables are appropriate or you and your particular set of tastes and priorities – i.e. what looks good on you regardless of that assemblage’s place on the continuum of fashion’s jet stream. It’s the difference between being stylish and being fashionable. Fashion will change, but style is yours. Sooner or later, like it or not, pleated pants will return for guys. But you don’t have to take the bait if they’re not your thing. [/column][column]If you want to walk around looking like a banker in 1905, that is personal style, but not fashion. Another example is that right now guy jeans are getting about as ghey as they can get. A few years from now (if not a few months from now) people will look back and wonder why everyone thought it was cool for straight guys to be walking around with frou frou swirly decorative patterns on their huge ass pockets. These jeans are the Sergio Valente of our time. Fashion, not style.

I’ve always felt that guys should have a cautious and sceptical eye to fashion because it’s simply not masculine for a guy to change his look often, say every season. Where’s the rigour, the reliability the strength and determination and constant dependability? Whimsy and fickle and frequent change are not masculine traits. Nor is being overly concerned with one’s appearance. Hence the importance of personal style.

So that established, getting back to shirts. If you’re selective AND you’re not shaped like a stage speaker, what shirt options do you have? Most major labels will have a spectrum of sub labels, getting increasingly casual or in some cases “fashion forward” (translation: will date very quickly) as they go down the line. BUT! the sub-lines also offer a departure from the classic conservo boxiness and can venture into more interesting details, some of which, if you’re lucky can correspond with your particular preferences. So occasionally there’s some special finds in the middle there where you get the thoughtful or unconventional design moves, but yet still staying on the safe safe of the trappings of the soon to look ridiculous. One day on Robson I walked by Boys’co, a store aimed at 19 year old guys with too much money. I hadn’t been there in well over a decade and a half, but in the split second that I passed by, this beautiful plain white dress shirt hanging on a rack in plain view room the entry caught my eye. There was something different about it. So I stopped, walked back and actually went in to check out. The music was brutal, and hit me like a punch in the face, but I pressed on because my long hunt for the perfect shirt was not about to be thrown off this close to salvation by monotonous club thumping. And oh, this was a beauty. I picked it up and had a look: Boss red label, 3 1/2″ collar (that’s long – see Redford’s shirts in “Indecent Proposal”), chamfered cuffs, good button spacing,  and unconventional tailored sleeve composition and darts. This was a shirt that only a tall slim guy could wear. And yes, I tried it on and we had a winner. I bought the only two they had. What an incredible find.

But of course, being a piece of fashion (that happened to coincide with my permanent style), they don’t make them anymore. Nothing even close. The next season naturally was all about short collars, duh. Well I don’t wear short collars, and now that those two shirts have seen fair wear, what do I do about replacements? Wait another ten years for the long collar to return? No.  

Solution: I take one of these babies down to Alan Custom Tailor’s on Cambie and 15th to get it knocked off. Now, Alan’s English is not his strong suit but he knew the game and he requested three weeks to do the job right. It wasn’t cheap, but I got the good buttons, the identical collar, the chamfered cuff, and every interesting little detail duplicated perfectly. And he even kept the paper cut-outs for future reference. Which I plan to put to use after his Christmas rush. 

And now I can stop looking, stop hunting. I am set for life with shirts (well at least Alan’s life). One part of my life is settled and it feels good![/column][/col-sect]

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