USW-Shirtex is a Montreal wholesaler of Italian shirting and suiting cloth. The name and the address are both worth unpacking before deciding what kind of supplier this actually is.
What the name actually tells you
USW stands for United Silks & Woollens. The company's own trade listings show it began in Canada in 1965 as two separate divisions built to serve master tailors and shirt makers, later fused into one corporation trading under the combined name USW-Shirtex from Montreal since 1975. Independent trade directories still list the full legal name as United Silks & Woollens-Shirtex, which matches the two-part history the company tells about itself. Its contact page gives the address as 225 Chabanel West, inside Montreal's Chabanel district, a garment quarter built up through the 1960s and 1980s that was once the centre of North America's wool suit manufacturing. A merchant with that address has been selling into the trade from the same corner of the same city for fifty years, which is a different thing to check than a founding date on its own. I would look up the street on a map before taking any company's word for its own history.
A Canadian merchant selling Italian cloth
I would correct a shop that told a client this was an Italian mill. The cloth may well be woven in Biella, but the company selling it to a boutique is headquartered in Quebec, not Piedmont, and has been for fifty years. That is not a mark against it. A merchant's value is exactly this: it does the work of finding and importing cloth from mills a small shop would otherwise never get in front of, then stocking it for the trade. It does that work from wherever it is practical to run a wholesale business, not from wherever the loom happens to sit.
The same is true of the other shirting names on our list. Thomas Mason is English cotton behind an Italian owner. Alumo is Swiss design with weaving now partly in Egypt. Söktaş grows its own Turkish cotton before it ever reaches a loom. Country of origin is rarely as simple as the label suggests.
USW-Shirtex lists its own range as pure silks, cashmeres, linens, woolens plus two-ply cottons, and says fabric ships next day once ordered. Not everything in that range is shirt weight. Cashmeres and heavier woolens read as jacket or trouser cloth, so a shop ordering specifically for shirts should ask which books in the library are actually shirt weight before assuming the whole range applies. I cannot verify a shipping promise made on someone else's site, so I would not repeat that specific claim to a client as though it were ours to guarantee. What I can verify is the address, the founding date and the region the cloth is said to come from, and those are the parts worth checking before building a pitch around this name.
Who else buys from them
USW-Shirtex's own site lists its customers as direct sellers, custom tailors and shirt makers, retail specialty shops, luxury equestrian shops, haute couture houses, and Hollywood production houses buying for costume design. That is a wide spread of buyer types under one wholesale account, from a two-person tailoring shop to a studio wardrobe department with a very different budget and timeline.
Their own site is specific about one of those buyer types: it says costume designers come to them for unique designs and colour palettes for film production, a believable niche for a merchant holding a deep swatch library, and a different sales conversation entirely from fitting a made-to-measure client for a work suit. I would not assume a small boutique gets the same terms, minimums or turnaround as a costume house buying against a production schedule. If a shop is going to open an account with a merchant like this, I would ask directly what a first order looks like for a business their size, rather than read the client list on the homepage and assume it describes their own experience.
Ordering it under your own label
We do not hold USW-Shirtex fabric in Shanghai. We order the specific book in against a confirmed job, then cut and make it under your own label from a one-piece minimum, in 14 days in production once the cloth reaches our atelier in Shanghai, plus shipping, with whatever time USW-Shirtex itself needs to ship added on top.
We buy from USW-Shirtex as a customer, not as a dealer or a representative of the company, and we do not claim any closer relationship than that.
Related: what to check on your first sample · suit fabric guide · suppliers
USW-Shirtex collections and books
These are the collection books USW-Shirtex lists by code and name on its own website, read on 30 September 2026. The site states no weight or composition for any book. What we hold in Shanghai or order in is stated above on this page.
| Collection | What it is | Weight and composition, as the mill states them |
|---|---|---|
| S-550 Unito Plains | Suiting, Spring/Summer 2026 | Not stated on the merchant's site |
| S-560 Chic Casual | Casual cloth, Spring/Summer 2026 | Not stated on the merchant's site |
| S-570 Luxury Suitings | Suiting, Spring/Summer 2026 | Not stated on the merchant's site |
| S-590 Exotica Jacketings | Jacketing, Spring/Summer 2026 | Not stated on the merchant's site |
| S-480 Noir Events | Formalwear, Spring/Summer 2026 | Not stated on the merchant's site |
| F-500 Luxury Plains | Suiting, Fall/Winter 2026-27 | Not stated on the merchant's site |
| F-510 Luxury Jacketings | Jacketing, Fall/Winter 2026-27 | Not stated on the merchant's site |
| F-520 Luxury Suitings | Suiting, Fall/Winter 2026-27 | Not stated on the merchant's site |
| F-310 V.B.C. 2-year in-stock program | Listed as a stock program by the merchant | Not stated on the merchant's site |
| F-610 V.B.C. 2-year in-stock program | Listed as a stock program by the merchant | Not stated on the merchant's site |
Its brand page also groups the range by fibre, from Super 100s to 160s merino and wool and cashmere, to two-ply cotton in 100s to 200s and pure linen. A shop orders a book through us as a special order against a confirmed job, and USW-Shirtex does not sit in our Shanghai stock. Source: USW-Shirtex, entire collection, USW-Shirtex, brand presentation.