Finding the Perfect Slim Fit Dress Shirt
Maybe you’re tall and skinny. Maybe you’ve got a thick neck and a narrow waist. Maybe you spend a lot of time in the gym and your shoulders and chest are massive. Whatever the case, you can never find dress shirts that fit right. Even most “slim fit” shirts don’t fit. You’re in great physical shape, yet you’re punished every time you go shopping. You’ve nearly given up finding a shirt that fits right. It will either be too short in the sleeves, too loose in the waist, or too tight in the neck… which compromise are we going to make this time?
Well, we’ve done some research on the topic here and thought we’d share what we found. Behold, our ranking of the most “Slim Fitting” dress shirts you can purchase off the rack. Our metric for “slim fittingness” is Midsection Width/Collar Circumference, so that the slimmer fitting shirts are on the top. We also looked at Midsection Width/Chest Width which measures the degree of taper the shirt has. To simplify things, we only rank shirts sized Large, or 16-16.5.
The results are interesting… By this metric, the most slim fitting shirts come from Ben Sherman, Esprit, DKNY, and Kenneth Cole. Banana Republic’s new “Heritage Fit” is also pretty narrow in the waist. Peculiar was that H&M’s Regular Fit was slimmer than the H&M Slim Fit - not by much though, and if we were to compare chest width to midsection width the Slim Fit would be considered slimmer. Finally, a lot of people recommend Brooks Brothers slim fit, so we were surprised to find that it’s nearly last on the list.
Of course, the problem with trying to find an off the rack shirt that fits is that once you do, you’re still going to have to worry about style, quality and price. If you don’t want to deal with all that, just head to Proper Cloth and get it right the first time. We can base your shirt on any of these sizes and even let you tweak the fit directly.
Great blog entry!
[...] the top 4 things you should look for in a slim fit shirt. We wish you the best of luck finding an off the rack slim fit shirt that fits you properly. Of course, if you get tired of walking around SoHo and 5th Ave all day [...]