Cloth, from the side that cuts it
Shirt fabric: what the weave decides and what the number costs
Two shirts can be identical in a photograph and behave nothing alike on the third wash. Shirting is the one component of a shirt that a picture cannot show you. The weave decides how the cloth behaves, whether it holds a crease or sheds one, whether it looks crisp at nine in the morning or at six in the evening. The ply decides how long it survives a laundry. And the number everybody quotes, the 100s and the 140s and the 200s, is a fineness rating that doubles as a fragility rating, which is the part nobody selling cloth has any reason to mention. First, so it is not buried: we do not sell cloth by the metre. We carry one shirting book, we cut from it, and this page is what we know because of that.
The three weaves that cover most of the work
| Poplin | Twill | Oxford | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the weave is | The plainest possible interlacing, one over one. Flat, smooth, nothing to catch the light. | A diagonal interlacing, which is why you can see a fine slanting line if you hold it close. | A basket weave, several yarns treated as one, which makes a visible small texture. |
| How it behaves | Crisp and cool, and it takes a press beautifully. It also takes a crease just as readily, and it keeps it. | Drapes softer, resists creasing, presses easily. The diagonal gives it a faint sheen that reads as slightly dressier than it is. | Heavier, more open, more air. It looks casual because it is casual. It also outlasts almost everything else in the drawer. |
| Where it fails | In a suitcase, and by the middle of a long day. The man who wants a shirt that still looks pressed at dinner should not be in fine poplin. | Under very hard wear the diagonal can shine at the elbow and the seat of the collar. It is a slow failure rather than a sudden one. | At a formal event. It is not a black tie shirt, and it is not a shirt for a serious meeting, whatever the bunch calls the colour. |
| Who it suits | The man who is photographed, and the man in a hot climate. It is the default business shirting for a reason. | The man who travels, and the man who does not want to think about ironing. If a shop only stocks one weave for a first order, this is the safe one. | The man who wears a shirt without a tie, under a knitted jacket, on a Friday. Excellent in that role and wrong in any other. |
| What I would not do | I would not sell fine poplin to somebody who told me he lives out of a bag. He will blame the shirt and he will be right. | I would not call twill the premium option because it costs more in some books. It is a different tool, not a better one. | I would not put oxford in a wedding order because the customer liked the texture in the swatch. That is a decision that looks fine in the shop and wrong in the photographs. |
Weave behaviour above is public textile convention rather than a claim about our own cloth. Our shirting is one book of 118 cloths, verified against our order system this week.
The words on a shirting bunch, in plain terms
Learn six of these and you can hold a conversation with any cloth merchant, including us, without being sold on a number.
- Shirting
- Cloth woven for shirts specifically, lighter and more tightly constructed than anything you would put in a jacket. If somebody offers you shirting and suiting from the same book, ask which one you are actually looking at, because the words are not interchangeable and the price often is.
- Two-fold, or two-ply
- Two finer yarns twisted together before weaving, rather than one thicker yarn. It costs more, it feels smoother, and it is the single biggest reason one shirt still looks like a shirt after fifty washes while another has gone limp at the collar. If you learn one term on this page, learn this one.
- The number: 80s, 120s, 200s
- A fineness count for the yarn. Higher means finer, smoother and more lustrous. It also means more fragile, because a finer yarn is a thinner yarn. A very high count is a luxury with a shorter working life, and treating it as a straightforward quality ranking is how a shop ends up with an unhappy customer who is not wrong.
- Poplin, sometimes called broadcloth
- The plain weave. Flat, formal, cool, and it creases. Broadcloth in American usage usually means the same thing, which causes more confusion in this trade than any other pair of words.
- Twill
- The diagonal weave. Softer drape, better crease recovery, slight sheen. The practical travel shirting, and the one I recommend when a shop is placing a first order and does not yet know how the customer lives.
- Oxford and royal oxford
- Basket weaves. Plain oxford is the casual workhorse, thick and textured and close to indestructible. Royal oxford is a finer version with a lustrous surface that dresses up well, and the two get confused constantly, so specify which one on the order.
- End on end, chambray, herringbone
- Variations that read as a solid colour from across a room and reveal texture up close. Useful when a customer wants a shirt that is not plain white and is not a pattern either. They photograph as solids, which is worth knowing before you promise a client a plain shirt.
What a cloth merchant has no reason to tell you
Do you sell shirting by the metre?
No. We are not a cloth merchant and I would rather say that on the first screen than three emails in. We buy shirting, we cut it, and we ship finished shirts. If you want cloth by the yard you want a merchant, and there are good ones. What we can do is cut from our own book, which is 118 shirting cloths, all in one collection.
Is a higher number a better shirt?
Up to a point, and then it stops being a quality question and becomes a lifestyle question. A very fine two-fold is smoother, cooler and more lustrous, and it is also thinner, which means the collar and the cuffs, the two places a shirt is rubbed hardest, wear through sooner. I will not put the finest cloth in the book on a man who wears one shirt a week and washes it hot. That is not caution. That is arithmetic.
What should a shop stock for a first order?
Twill, in white and in light blue, if you are only allowed two. Twill forgives travel, forgives ironing and forgives a customer whose habits you do not yet know. Poplin is the better looking cloth and the less forgiving one. Once you have sold thirty shirts you will know your customers well enough to be adventurous, and not before.
Can I order a specific mill's shirting?
Ask before you promise it to a client. We carry one shirting book and we cut from that. If a customer has his heart set on a named mill we do not hold, the honest answer to him is that his shop cannot get it rather than that it is coming, and I would rather you hear that from me than discover it after taking a deposit.
How does shirting change the fit?
It changes how the fit reads more than what it measures. A stiff poplin holds the shape we cut, so the fit you specified is the fit he sees. A soft twill follows the body and forgives half a centimetre. That is a reason to be more careful with measurements on crisp cloth, not less: on poplin, every error is visible, because nothing drapes over it.
Does the cloth change the lead time?
Not by itself. 14 to 20 working days in the workshop, the same window as a suit, plus freight. What does change the timeline is choosing a cloth, changing your mind, and then choosing again, which is a scheduling problem rather than a production one.
How many shirt options are there once the cloth is chosen?
Forty seven live shirt options: collars, cuffs, plackets, pockets, backs, monograms. That is a real count from the system, not a brochure number. Together with 13 measurement fields, ten of them required, that is the whole shirt order. The cloth is the part customers enjoy choosing and the measurements are the part that decides whether they order again.
What if the cloth arrives looking different from the swatch?
Then somebody should be able to point at which lot it came from. Ask any supplier, us included, to put the fault, rework and freight split in writing before the first order, so a colour question is a procedure rather than an argument. Also be honest with the customer about the swatch: a 5cm square under shop lighting is not a shirt under office lighting, and that is true of every book in the trade including ours.
Choose the cloth for the man, not for the number
If you are putting together a first shirt order and want to know what we actually hold, ask. If you have a customer who wants the finest thing in the book, tell us how he lives and we will tell you honestly whether it will survive him.