Suiting sells on weight and canvas. Shirting sells on count and weave, and if you carry both without knowing the difference, you will find yourself quoting a client on the wrong number. Thomas Mason is where I would start that education, because it has both ends of the range under one name: a workhorse poplin and a superfine that very few clients actually need.
An English name under an Italian roof
Thomas Mason was founded in Lancashire in 1796, one of the first mills to manufacture cotton shirting fabric at any scale, and it built its name on long-staple two-fold cotton exported through the British Empire and sold directly to West End tailors. Albini Group, the Italian company that now owns it, is the newer story here in one specific sense: it was founded in 1876 near Bergamo, by Zaffiro Borgomanero, and passed to his nephew Giovanni Albini in 1890 when the childless founder handed the business on.
Albini took over Thomas Mason in 1992, in the same deal as two other English shirting names, David & John Anderson and Ashton Shirtings. That acquisition also brought an archive of more than seven hundred volumes of historic fabric samples into the Albini Group, and it is still used as a reference for new patterns today. I mention the archive because it is a real, checkable thing, not a heritage adjective. Ask, and a rep can tell you which volume a pattern was pulled from.
Count matters more than weight here
On a suit, the number that tells you the most is grams per metre. On a shirt, it is the yarn count, written as something like 100s or 140s, and it measures how fine the spun thread is before it gets woven. Higher numbers mean finer, smoother thread. It does not mean a better shirt for every client, and this is the part most boutiques skip.
Thomas Mason's entry two-fold construction sits at 100/2, sold under the name Mayfair, a tight, durable poplin that is the right starting point for most first orders. The Goldline range moves up to 140/2, spun from Giza 45 Egyptian cotton, and the top of the range reaches 170/2, which sits inside what the trade calls superfine, generally anything from 160/2 upward.
Here is the part I will not soften. A 170/2 two-fold shirt looks extraordinary under a shop's lighting and feels almost weightless against the skin. It also wrinkles faster than a lower count, shows wear sooner at the collar and cuff, and punishes a bad iron or a rough dry cleaner in a way a 100/2 poplin simply shrugs off. I do not open a first order for a boutique at 170s. A client who has never owned two-fold cotton before will judge the fabric by how it looks after the first home wash, not by the count printed on the swatch card, and a high count with no aftercare conversation attached is how a beautiful fabric earns a bad reputation instead of a repeat client.
Weave changes the story again
Poplin is the default: a plain, tight weave that takes a crisp press and reads as formal. Thomas Mason's Royal Oxford construction, used on styles like Hampton at 140s, is a different animal, a basket-style weave that reads more textured and slightly more casual even at a high count. If a client wants one shirt that moves between a suit and an open collar, I point them at a Royal Oxford before I point them at a poplin in the same count. Weave decides how the cloth behaves as much as count does, and a buyer who only asks about thread count is asking half the question.
Do not sell a client a count without naming the weave next to it. A "170s Thomas Mason" on its own could mean a crisp poplin dress shirt or a textured Oxford that wears completely differently, and a client who orders on the number alone has no idea which one they are getting.
Checking what you are actually buying
Ask for three things before you commit a client to a Thomas Mason order: the count, written as a fraction like 100/2 or 140/2, the weave, and the collection name if there is one, Mayfair or Goldline or a named style such as Hampton. A supplier working from real Albini stock answers all three without hesitation. One that answers with "fine Italian cotton" and nothing else is not looking at a spec sheet, whatever they tell you about heritage. Never accept that as the whole answer. Our guide to verifying mill cloth covers the general version of this test, and it applies to a shirting quote exactly as much as a suiting one.
Where to actually start a boutique order
If your client base is new to two-fold cotton, I would open at 100s or 120s poplin, let them feel the difference against a commodity shirt, and hold the Goldline 140s and 170s range for the client who already owns three of these shirts and knows exactly what they are paying extra for. It is not a rule we invented. It is just what happens when a first-time buyer's expectations meet a fabric that needs more care than they are used to giving a shirt.
The same count-first approach applies to the other shirting names on our list: Alumo from Switzerland; Söktaş from Turkey; and USW-Shirtex, the Montreal merchant that wholesales Biella-region cloth. Ask for the count and the weave before the country of origin.
We do not hold Thomas Mason cloth in Shanghai. It is special order, quoted and cut by the metre against a confirmed client order, the same as most of the mills on our supplier list. Our guide to what to check on your first sample covers what to verify before you commit to a larger run, and it applies just as much to a shirting order as a suit. If you want a swatch and a real count-by-count quote, contact us and we will pull it directly rather than estimate.