The London Lounge

I am so tired of being unable to purchase all the beautiful shirts I so desperately crave, for the simple reason that I belong to that lowest caste of shirt-wearing, the 14.5 inches.

I recently had a look at Turnbull and Assers new webshop. A great development, but there were no shirts in my sizes at all. In the Jermyn street shop there are a few, bu the selection is extremely limited compared to all other sizes. At Cole's shirtmakers, it's almost as bad. None of their slim-fitting shirts are available, with a few exceptions. Harvie and Hudson have no 14.5 shirts at all. At Hilditch and Key the selection is very limited. New and Lingwood have none at all. I could go on and on....

Would somebody join me in starting a firebrand webbased uproar to vindicate the rights of the 14.5 inch shirt-wearers?

I know you might say I have to go for a bespoke shirt, and that would of course be wonderful. But should it really be such a difficulty to produce 14.5 inch shirts as compared to 15.0 or 18.0? I just don't get it.

/J

fyrisboda

Welcome from another recent member, and one with a scrawny 14.5 neck. My general experience with shirts over the past 20 years or so is that H&K survuive the laundy process better but are cut larger: T&A are cut slightly slimmer but the fabric gives out sooner. Not to mention sleve length problems... it's certainly difficult for us.

In my case, I've finally bitten the bullet and put myself in the hands of Robert Whittaker at Dege in the hope that I will no longer have to wear balloons. I eagerly await the outcome.

I was once a 14.5 collar, and I used to buy at Brooks Bros. I used to buy that size in both its regular "Makers" make and its "university" make, "Brooksgate." I don't know if Brooks still carries that size.

Generally, retailers carry a narrow range of sizes with the viewpoint of not having to carry inventory from season to season. It used to be that a major retailer, such as Brooks or Tripler or Barneys, could fit almost any size. Now retailers concentrate on the most popular sizes, and customers at either end of the sizing spectrum are stuck with MTM.

Retailers' elimination of the smaller and larger sizes has been one reason for the growth of MTM.

Check out Alberto Khem from Mytailor.com who's in London( he and his colleagues travel worldwide)at the end of this month. Cracking shirts, fabrics etc and for less than an 'off the peg' at Marks and Sparks.

Nice to see I'm not alone. My biggest problem regarding these shirts is that I also have a 34.5 sleeve length. Luckily, T M Lewin shirts seem to be slightly small in the neck size so I usually buy 15's from them.

Surely, the answer is to eat more animal fat?