Measuring, from the side that cuts
Dress shirt measurements: two numbers you buy by, thirteen we cut from
A dress shirt is the only serious garment in a man's wardrobe still sold on two numbers. A neck, and a sleeve. Sixteen and a half, thirty four. Those two numbers describe his collar and his arm, and they describe absolutely nothing about the fifty centimetres of torso in between. Which is why a shirt can fit perfectly at the throat and still sit on the man like a laundry bag. When a shop sends me a made to measure shirt order it arrives as thirteen fields, not two. This page is about the other eleven, why the label leaves them out, and which of them will quietly kill a shirt programme if the shop gets it wrong.
Two numbers, thirteen fields, and the gap between them
| Ready to wear | Made to measure | What fails in the gap | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The neck | One number, in inches in the US and the UK, in centimetres almost everywhere else. Sixteen inches is 40.5cm and sells as a 41 in most European ranges. | Neck, measured on the body, with a note saying whether the number is the body or the finished collar. Both columns exist on our sheet for a reason. | Nothing much. The collar is the one thing ready to wear usually gets right, which is exactly why it gets trusted for everything else. |
| The arm | A sleeve length, or a range like 34 to 35, measured from the centre of the back over the shoulder to the wrist. | Sleeve length, bicep, and optionally the cuff circumference. Three numbers, because a long thin arm and a long thick arm are not the same sleeve. | A sleeve that is the right length and grips the bicep. The customer can button the cuff and cannot lift his arm. He will not call this a defect. He will just stop wearing it. |
| The torso | Nothing. Occasionally a fit name. Slim, regular, classic. A fit name is the maker's guess at an average torso, not a measurement of this one. | Chest, waist, stomach, seat, front length, back length, and optionally front chest and back chest. Six required numbers describing the part the label does not mention. | This is where the shirt actually fails. Right collar, wrong waist, and it blouses over the belt when he sits down. Nobody sends it back. Nobody reorders either. |
| The shoulder | Nothing at all. Ready to wear shoulder width is a consequence of the chest size you picked. | Shoulder, measured point to point across the back. It sets where the yoke seam lands and it is the one measurement an alterations tailor cannot fix afterwards. | The failure I see most often is a ticket where the shoulder and the back length never change between customers. Thirty different men, one number, copied down the sheet. |
| Who pays | The customer, once, and he treats it as normal because everyone's shirts fit like that. | The shop that took the measurement. Ten of our thirteen fields are required precisely so a shirt cannot be cut from a guess. | Nobody argues about a shirt. It is not expensive enough to argue about. That is what makes it dangerous: a bad shirt programme dies silently, without a single complaint to tell you why. |
Thirteen fields, ten of them required, verified against our own order system. The neck to centimetre conversions above are public convention rather than a standard, and makers vary.
The eleven measurements the label leaves out
Every term here is a field on our shirt sheet. If a word is not on this list, do not write it on a ticket and expect us to read it.
- Neck, body and finished
- The body number is the neck itself. The finished number is the collar we build, which is larger. Our sheet has a column for each because a shop that measures the throat and a shop that measures a favourite collar are sending two different numbers, and if we cannot tell which, we have to ask, and asking costs a day.
- Sleeve length
- Taken from the centre of the back, over the point of the shoulder, down the slightly bent arm to the wrist bone. From the centre back, not from the shoulder seam. A sleeve measured from a seam that sits in the wrong place inherits that error and adds it to the cuff.
- Shoulder
- Point to point across the back. This one is load bearing. It decides where the yoke lands, and a yoke in the wrong place cannot be corrected later by anybody, at any price. If you take one measurement carefully, take this one.
- Chest, waist, stomach, seat
- Four circumferences down the body. Chest at the fullest point, waist at the natural waist, stomach where the belly actually is rather than where you would like it to be, seat at the bottom of the shirt's run. Together they are the difference between a shirt shaped like the man and a shirt shaped like a tube.
- Front chest and back chest
- Widths rather than circumferences, taken across the front and across the back between the arm creases. Optional on our sheet. They matter for a man who is broad in one plane and narrow in the other, which is common and which circumferences alone cannot see.
- Front length and back length
- Two separate numbers, because a shirt that is level at the hem on a hanger is not level on a man. A forward head, a full stomach or a pronounced seat all pull the hem out of line, and the fix is in the pattern rather than in the ironing.
- Bicep and sleeve cuff
- The arm's circumference at its fullest and at the wrist. Bicep is required, cuff is optional. A cuff number becomes necessary the moment the customer wears a watch he does not intend to take off, which he will not think to mention.
Questions the size chart does not answer
Can you cut a made to measure shirt from a neck and a sleeve?
No, and I would rather say that plainly than accept the order and hope. Two numbers describe the collar and the arm. They cannot tell me whether the man is 20cm bigger in the chest than the waist or the same all the way down, and those two shirts are not the same shirt. If a neck and a sleeve is genuinely all you have, order ready to wear and let the customer take it to an alterations tailor. That is a worse shirt honestly delivered rather than a better one promised and missed.
What is a 16 and a half, 34 to 35?
Sixteen and a half inches of neck and a sleeve somewhere between 34 and 35 inches, US convention. In centimetres the neck is about 42, and most European ranges would print that as a 42. The sleeve range exists because ready to wear cannot afford a size for every inch, so it sells you a band and lets the cuff sit where it lands.
Should I measure the customer or his favourite shirt?
Either, but tell me which, and never mix the two on one ticket. A garment measurement is the body plus that maker's ease, and if I read it as a body measurement I add my ease on top and the shirt arrives one full size too big. The single most expensive line on a shirt ticket is the one where somebody measured the shirt for the chest and the man for the neck.
He is between collar sizes. Round up or down?
Ask me, do not round. I do not round a collar up by default and I would not want a shop doing it on my behalf. Half a centimetre of neck is the difference between a collar that closes under a tie and one that gapes, and which way to go depends on whether he wears a tie daily, occasionally, or never. That is a question about the man and only the shop can answer it.
How many shirt options are there?
Forty seven live shirt options in the system as of this week: collars, cuffs, plackets, pockets, backs, monograms. That is a real number rather than a marketing one, and you can hold us to it. Choosing among them is quick. Getting the thirteen measurements right is the part that takes the appointment.
How long does a shirt take?
14 to 20 working days in the workshop, the same window as a suit, plus whatever the freight adds. Shirts do not jump the queue for being smaller. If a shop is planning a first order around an event, count backwards from the event rather than forwards from the appointment.
What if the first shirt is wrong?
Then something on the ticket was wrong, and the useful thing is to find out which field rather than to reorder blind. Ask any supplier, us included, to put the fault and rework and freight split in writing before the first order, so that conversation is a procedure rather than an argument. A shop that has that in writing will take the measurement more carefully, which is the actual point.
Do you make shirts under our own label?
Yes. Our shirt line is Corsetti, and shirts can carry a shop's own label instead. That decision changes nothing about the thirteen fields, which is worth saying because a shop planning a private label programme sometimes assumes the branding is the hard part. It is not. The measuring is.
Send the thirteen, not the two
If you are measuring a customer this week and want the sheet we actually cut from, ask for it. If you are already sending shirt orders and one of them came back wrong, tell us which field you suspect and we will read the ticket with you.