How Should A Dress Shirt Fit?

It’s perfectly okay to want to have some things a certain way. You want your beer to be cold, not lukewarm. You want your football games to be exciting, not boring. You want your clothes to be pressed, clean, ready to wear at all times without having to do pressing, laundry, and folding – right? You want to look good. You need to pick clothes that look good on you, clothes that complement your skin tone, hair color or eyes, but most important of all, you need to choose clothes that fit you well.

Starting From the Top

Choosing a dress shirt that fits well boils down to one thing – the amount of fabric used to make the shirt. If there’s too much of it, the shirt will have issues with being too lose and too long. If there’s not enough of it, the shirt will be too short and too tight. Wingfield shirts are of course, a perfect blend and ratio of fabric.

So let’s start from the top – the collar. A good rule of thumb is that when you put your shirt on, and button it all the way to the top, including the collar button, you should be able to insert two fingers between the collar and your neck. If you can’t, that means the collar is too tight, and if you can insert more than two fingers, it means the collar is too loose. We’ve taken the collar design a step further at Wingfield by having each cut slightly lower, allowing for the Adam’s apple to move without irritation.

What about the shoulders? There’s no way to insert your fingers and gauge the correct amount of room, and you really wouldn’t need to – when it comes to how the shirt fits your shoulders, you only need to rely on your sight. The line when the shoulders end and the sleeves begin should rest on the part of your shoulders where they end and the arms begin. If the shirt is too big, the shoulder part will slouch over the top of your arm, and if it’s too small, you’ll have your shoulder in the sleeve. Wingfield shirts are cut to standard sleeve length. See chart above based on arm length.

Moving to the Side

When you look at the sleeve of a dress shirt, using your common sense should be the only thing you need to determine how well it fits. If it’s too tight, it will look the part and you won’t be able to move your arm without stretching the fabric considerably. If it’s too loose, it would look as if you’d be able to fit a sleeve of something bulky, like a sweater, underneath it. Remember that Seinfeld episode?

The length of the sleeve has a generally accepted rule that the sleeve should be long enough to cover your wrist when your arms are relaxed beside your torso. More than that, and it would be covering your hand, less than that and your wrist would show.

The cuff should also fit properly, as it should be neither too tight nor too loose. Think of the cuff as of the collar for the hand, and make sure that there’s just enough room between the cuff and your wrist to allow full range of motion. Also, if you like to wear watches, the cuff should be just loose enough so that it can slide over the watch.

Torso and Bottom, For the End

If your dress shirt is too big for you, it will make you look fat, which is most evident from the looks of a shirt’s torso that’s too big. If, on the other hand, the torso is too tight, you won’t be able to button the sleeve, and if you manage to do it, the shirt will look stretched, and you may end up in a remake of this Chris Farley classic.

The length of the shirt is probably the least of your problems if you plan to tuck it in your pants when you’re wearing it. If the shirt is too short, you won’t be able to tuck it in, and if it’s too long, you’ll have way too much fabric tucked into your pants. Ideally, the shirt should end halfway between the belt and the place where the pant legs begin. Wingfield shirts are cut to be worn both tucked, and untucked.

Finding a shirt that fits you perfectly is important, and Wingfield strives to bring you that option through our US based manufacturing process.

Wingfield SIZE NOTES

Wingfield shirts focus on the importance of fit, yarn formation and fabric construction to ensure durability. Our shirts are cut to be worn both tucked and untucked. They look great with jeans, but can also be worn with slacks and dress pants. We advise ordering based primarily on your suit jacket size. For example, if you're a 40R (Medium) but happen to have a 16.5 neck (Large), you should order a Medium. The neck bands on our shirts are cut on the bias to give a more comfortable fit.

Most men with an in-between suit jacket size (e.g. 39 or 41) prefer to size up, but if you like your shirts to fit very close to the body then you should size down.  Still have fit questions? Contact us at fit@jwingfield.com

Wingfield SIZE CHART