Have you ever wondered how many dress shirts you must have to have a complete classic style
wardrobe?
In today's video, we'll discuss how many dress shirts a man should have no matter if you
regularly dress up or you hardly ever do.
If you're a follower of the Gentleman's Gazette, you may have come across the video about 10
dress shirts every man should invest in but if you're looking into building a timeless
classic man's wardrobe, 10 is just the start.
So in today's video, I go over my shirt wardrobe, what I learned over the years, and I'll try
to help you and guide you so you can build up the shirt wardrobe that suits your personal
needs and wants.
So to answer the question right from the get-go, how many dress shirts do you need?
The answer is it depends.
So let's break it down.
Personally, I have about 60 to 70 dress shirts; sometimes I add, some sometimes I'll retire
some, but overall, that's the number.
Personally, I don't consider it to be too much for a number of reasons.
One, dress shirts are the backbone of my wardrobe.
I hardly ever wear undershirts and so it's always something that protects my jackets
and my outer garments from my body fluids.
With the exception of going to the gym or maybe mowing the lawn, I usually wear dress
shirts or maybe a polo shirt when it's really hot and I'm in a very casual setting.
So for me, a dress shirt is truly an everyday piece of my attire.
Two, shirts come in endless variations.
Yes, you may have one white shirt but then there are different weaves, there different
weights, there are different patterns, there are different collar shapes, different cuff
shapes, different fits, and so it's not difficult for me to always come up with a new shirt
that's different than any other that I've had so far.
Three, I consider my dress shirt not to be just a plain white or light blue background
but I actively try to incorporate different colors into my overall outfits.
So rather than going with that white shirt, I maybe go with an off-white or a light pale
yellow.
Four, dress shirts for me are part of an investment in my wardrobe and not a throwaway item.
I still have shirts in my wardrobe that are more than ten years old and I still have them
in my rotation.
Of course, the more shirts you have, the fewer you wear the individual ones, the longer they
will overall last.
The oldest shirts I have in my wardrobe today I bought used from a gentleman who was a realtor
and about to retire, he had my height and he had all of his shirts made at Siniscalchi
in Milano and it's a bespoke shirt maker that is very expensive.
Shirts usually go for around five to six hundred euros and he was just handing them to me at
bargain prices and they all had very cool fabrics, very unusual styles, and the one
I am wearing here right now is in fact, one of those.
It's not something I would suggest you invest in when you're just building a shirt wardrobe
but it's definitely something you can add once you have all the basics covered.
If you take care of your shirts properly which means washing them in a little bag, ideally
at home and then ironing them by hand, they should last you a long time.
If you have shirts made for you, it may be a good idea to invest in separate collars
and cuffs because that's what usually wears out the first and so you can just exchange
that and still enjoy that shirt.
Now some of the old Siniscalchi shirts I have are just starting to fray around the edges
on the collar and the cuffs and since I do not have any excess fabric I could turn them
into winchester shirts meaning I use contrasting white collars and cuffs, that way,I could
still enjoy wearing the overall shirt without having to just buy an entirely new shirt.
The other option would be to simply wear them as they are and for example, Francesco Barberis
Canonico is someone who could afford a new shirt but he deliberately chooses to wear
really worn down shirts and if you take a closer look, you can always see that his shirts
are heavily frayed and you can see the interlining and white sometimes popping out from underneath
but just like having all the rugs in your home with signs of wear, it's kind of a very
British attitude and he just goes with it and it suits his style.
I'm not saying this is something that you should practice and it requires a certain
style in order to pull it off.
More often than not, people would probably think of you as frumpy or not well taken care
of if you have a meticulous wardrobe with fraying shirts.
The fifth reason for having so many shirts is that there are so many different seasons
and I like to change my shirt wardrobe with the seasons.
In the winter I wear heavier Oxfords or heavier twill shirts, sometimes they have a little
flannel texture, just so I'm warmer and more comfortable.
In the summer, I wear very lightweight fabrics with an open weave that help my skin to breathe
and keep me cooler.
Of course, in the in between seasons, you can wear medium weight fabrics and ultimately,
you have to analyze where you live.
If you live in a climate like I do where you have very hot summers and very cold winters,
you need different shirts than if you live let's say in Sri Lanka where it's hot all
year round.
Last but not least, I'm not a big fan of dry cleaning my dress shirts.
yes it would be easier to do so but I have very good quality dress shirts and at a dry
cleaner they usually wash them not as gently and carefully as it can be done at home.
also they're usually not completely hand ironed but machine ironed and all of those things
help to wear down your shirt prematurely.
So as a general guideline, how many shirts should you invest in when you're starting
out and you're interested in a classic wardrobe?
I would say ten is the bare minimum.
so first of all the basics, I think every man should invest in ten dress shirts if they
have somewhat of a use for dress shirts on a regular basis and you can check out which
first those are in this video here.
if you wear shirts to the office 10 is actually the bare minimum I suggest to have more like
a three or four week rotation which means 15 or 20 dress shirts. of course the bigger
the rotation the longer your shirts will last. for the most part the first ten shirts should
be mostly white off-white or shades of blues and again check out the video for specifics
here.
personally, I'm a big fan of pastel-colored shirts light greens or lavender or yellow
but typically that's something you should add on top of the ten basics.
if you don't have to wear a dress shirt to work and you don't like wearing dress shirts
I suggest you have at least three dress shirts that you can always rely on.
one is a white dress shirt ideally with French cuffs for cufflinks without a chest pocket
and it's something that you can wear for anything from a job interview to a funeral to a wedding
or any kind of other formal events.
if you don't have cufflinks or you don't want to invest money in them go with a single barrel
cuff which is also known as a button cuff. if you want to invest in cufflinks I would
suggest you get one pair in gold and one pair in silver in a very traditional style without
any diamonds or colored stones.
personally, I would choose a monkey fist knot cufflink because they're versatile they're
classic and it's something you could wear with any kind of outfit. for a selection of
those please check out our shop here.
if you know that you attend black-tie events sometimes it also pays to invest in a tuxedo
shirt.
the second must have dress shirt you need even if you hardly everywhere dress shirts
is a check shirt.
ideally you get it with a button-down collar because it's more casual and you don't need
to wear it with any form of neckwear and for that you definitely want to have barrel cuffs
or button cuffs and you can also have a chest pocket if you want.
the third shirt I think you should invest in is a denim shirt because it can really
help to dress down other things you don't have to iron it it's something that is popular
right now and has been popular for the last few years.
it's soft it's hard wearing and it's something that works well in the wardrobe that is not
true for me.
on the other hand if you're a collector a classic menswear enthusiast or simply a clothes
horse, the sky is really the limit.
obviously that's me and you can have just 10 shirts that are all in white but they can
have different cuff styles different collar styles different weaves different front plackets
different buttons and all those little details make the shirts different and suited for different
occasions.
of course at this point storage can be a challenge and basically you can fold them and put them
in drawers but I find that it takes up a lot of drawers and so I hang all of my shirts
on specific shirt hangers that are not too wide so they don't take up too much space
in my wardrobe.
Personally I use the ones from Butler luxury which served me quite well and match my much
wider suit hangers.
so once you have all the basics covered I suggest you go with pastel colors pastel pink
pastel lavender green you can have other shades that are combining those colors and just play
with things.
one color that's really underrated in men's dress shirts my opinion is a subtle green.
you can also add different kinds of patterns such as maybe a small houndstooth shirt or
maybe a horizontal striped shirt or maybe stripes in an unusual color such as this one
in kind of a light charcoal and yellow.
of course you can also experiment with different fabrics and different weights as well as finishes
and on top of that playing with a collar shape is probably the detail that has the biggest
impact because it defines the V shapes and the triangles that lead to your face.
personally I think it's a lot of fun to play with different options you have.
first of all it's the height of your collar then the spread of your collar also how long
you want the collar to be in the front as well as how much tie space you want which
really depends on what kind of tie knots you tie if you have bigger tie knots such as the
Windsor you want more tie space otherwise you can get away with no tie space at all.
of course you can also have club collars or create collars for collar pins with little
pin holes in them just so you have exactly the right shirt for the right occasion.
I also urge you to experiment with different details such as pleats in the back or if you
have little grinze patterns you can have shirts that have a higher degree of
handwork you can have shirts with different buttons you can experiment with shirts from
different shirt makers like a shirt from Paris is different than one from Milan or one from
Naples, same thing with shirts from London or from Germany.
and over time you probably create some preferences for certain kinds of shirts for certain occasions
and it's just a joy to experiment and try new things.
if you attend evening events regularly you also may want to invest in different kind
of evening shirts.
some could have wide pleated fronts or slim pleated fronts.
you could have different kinds of Marcella inserts, you can have starched shirts, and
it's just interesting and with black tie, there's not a whole lot variety in what you
can do so changing up the shirt detail has a much bigger impact than it would on let's
say a business suit.
so overall, just like with anything else in your wardrobe, it really depends on your needs
and what you want however once you know what you're going for it pays to start out with
the basics that give you the most use for your purpose which means the lowest cost per
wear. in general that means staying away from super flashy or unusual things and it means
that you leave them behind even though they may be really really discounted
on a super sale.
but even you get the shirt at 90% off it is kind of wasted if you just wear it twice in
a period of 10 years.
in today's video I'm wearing a vintage Siniscalchi dress shirts with French cuffs for cufflinks
and wearing them with Tiger's eye cufflinks with an Eagle Claw from Fort Belvedere which
you can find in our shop here and my slacks are part of a suit they're blue they have
inward-facing pleats because that's what I like I have big thighs and it works for my
silhouette my socks are brown and blue shadow striped socks and they pick up the color of
the pants as well as the cufflinks and they transition that to my brown loafers.
They are classic style penny loafers on an Italian last which is why I like them quite
a bit.
probably I wouldn't wear the outfit exactly like that instead I would add a tie maybe
a knit tie and a jacket because I just feel more comfortable that way.
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