Bespoke Shirts and Monograms

[andreyb]

Regarding colour: I like the suggestion given by Pierre Duboin in his blog -- to use "tone on tone collé".

Other shirtmakers I met with (Stephen Lachter, Leonardo Bugelli) agree with Pierre.

As for style... well, in my opinion, this is one of few things where there are no good or bad choices... just your personal preference.

Andrey

[Des Esseintes]

If you, dear Clemens, frequent a decent shirtmaker, which none of us would doubt for a second, they will offer to have your family's coat of arms embroidered with two or three selected initials underneath. Select the ones most suitable to distinguish yourself from your other family members who may use the services of the same maker - otherwise the initials should be nothing to worry about anyway.

dE

[emc894]

I live in a country where having a coat of arms embroidered on a shirt would be seen as quite an affectation. I am undecided on monogramming bespoke shirts. I feel that it can be gauche in some circumstances, especially when wearing the shirt more casually without a jacket. I would love to hear the lounge's opinon on monogramming and location. I am considering three block letters, the same color as the shirt on my chest or lower on the ribcage.

[mafoofan]

I have my shirts monogrammed right above the hem, next to the placket. It's just a pretty, unseen-by-anyone-else affectation.

[Jordan Marc]

Mathew:

Placing your monogram on the hem of the shirt isn't an affectation; it's an understatement, and a sign of good taste. Monograms embroidered on a front shirt panel or a turnback cuff are in bad taste. Keeping the initials hidden is a model of restraint.

JMB

[Costi]

I admire Mafoofan's honest answer.
JMB, I don't understand: an understatement of what precisely? What does a monogram "state" today and to whom?

[Jordan Marc]

Costi:

Time was a monogram was merely a laundry mark placed under the shirtmaker's label below the collar. How it got from the inside of the shirt to the outside in the breast area or to the cuff or to the linen hanky in the breast pocket is something of a mystery, though I suspect it has a lot to do with a false sense of security of 'having arrived' on the part of the wearer. If three initials aren't enough, why not the whole name in a gaudy color? That in turn leads to putting your brand on everything you own. It's vulgar and ostentatious. If you don't know who you are and feel compelled to broadcast your existence to the whole world, rent a billboard or hire a pilot to drag your name over a stadium, not that anyone driving by or focused on the game will give a good goddamn. It's just foolishness, that's all there is to that. What's needed is self-rapport and understatement.

JMB

[marcelo]

I can't fail to remember one of Jeeves and Wooster episodes when Jeeves asks his employer if embroidered initials are not for those gentlemen prone to forgetting their own names.

[Simon A]

/

[Costi]

JMB, I'm afraid the meaning of my rhethorical question was a bit blurry. Unless one is a member of a family residing in palaces large enough that one's laundry might get mixed up with others' but for the monogram, such a distinctive mark may be seen at best as a personal quirk and Mafoofan named it honestly. At its worst, if taken seriously, suggesting that one might be in such a position by displaying a monogram, though not technically a lie, leads others into thinking something that is not true; UNDERstating this, as though modestly hiding a status one does not even have in the first place, has a strong scent of bovarism. That is why I prefer Mafoofan's admission that it is a mere affectation and I find it perfectly acceptable as such (though it does invite assumptions or questions anyway).

[Daedalus]

I have not seen this kind of placement ever before. Bad taste?

[Edward Bainbridge]

I don't quite understand monograms on shirts anyway, but considering that this part of the shirt isn't seen by the general public - why not?