Checked Shirt

[rodes]

One of the best points made by Manton in his fine book, "The Suit", was advancement of the checked shirt. This shirt is much unappreciated in the US. Small checks are an elegant compliment to a simply striped tie, such as the Guards, and larger checks are perfect for a solid tie. I started wearing these perhaps four years ago and now find that almost half of my dress shirts are such. It makes for a nice change of presentation, unexpected yet conventional. Why do I see so few of them?

[Luca]

First of all, I think they are inherently a bit more difficult to match / assemble within an outfit than plains (of course) and most stripes and that puts some people off trying.
Secondly, among the great unwashed I've seen some of the most common (but not the worst) worst atrocities in shirts being perpetrated through badly chosen checks. Again, it puts one off.
Amogn the checks, I think that gingham, though sweet, is really just too casual for suits and very bold checks are ghastly. Fine, graph-paper checks (especially if the squares are not too) look nice and in the right colour houdnstooth can be very nice on a shirt.

I suppose tattersall falls under this category, too, and for country wear it's such a calssic.

[Scot]

I'm with rodes. Yes, they are a challenge, but in muted colours, and with the right scale, they can add interest. They are a less formal option though. They can work very nicely with ancient madder.

[hectorm]

Small checks are an elegant compliment to a simply striped tie, such as the Guards, and larger checks are perfect for a solid tie?

I´m yet to see an already good combination suit-tie-medium check shirt that couldn´t be enhanced by wearing a smaller checked or solid color shirt instead.
Of course, sometimes you would not want to enhance but downplay a bit the elegance of your well cut suit or the formality of your ensemble, without going too far. With a solid suit, a carefully chosen medium checked shirt with French cuffs might be the way to achieve it. Michael Anton is a good example of someone who knows how to do this.

[Melcombe]

Check shirts are surely a bit of a minefield – for the unwary at least. I have always associated them with cotton flannel, cotton/wool mix (Viyella) or brushed cotton in a fairly heavy weight, and generally in a Tattersall check. In my first profession they were something of a uniform (with a tweed sports coat, dark flannels and heavy brown shoes).

Ties seem to be the test : plain wool or darker madder – as suggested – seems the safe bet, but a check shirt is one of the few backgrounds that can cope with crested ties (a repeat diagonal pattern) or regimental ties of the sort of colour combination that can return fire by themselves at 100 paces. It's a sort of visual overload that somehow doesn't jar as much as you'd suppose.

Cordings make some good examples of such shirts at a reasonable price. They are very full-cut, but that suits me well. Their marketing often twins them with their heavy tweed check RTW items, which is quite a common sight in these parts - especially with a plain lambswool sweater between the two.

They do give a chance to ring the changes when worn with a plain suit, but the older I get the more I think that white shirts are the answer to almost every shirt-related question. Having said that, the only shirts I've ever found in Emma Willis’s sales have been ferociously striped or (slightly milder) checks, so they still find their way into my wardrobe.

… on that point, I've just worked out that check shirts outnumber stripes in my wardrobe by more than 2 to 1. All the rest are plain white. Maybe they've been part of a subtle (not sartorially of course) trend. Im sure I used to wear a lot of stripes.

[Luca]

...the older I get the more I think that white shirts are the answer to almost every shirt-related question...

I could not agree more. Sure, there are times when one wants to vary shirts a bit but the mroe interested one becomes in mixing coat/wasitcoat/trouser fabrics, the more of a staple the white shirt (and the very dark blue tie) becomes.

I don't recall ever seeing anyone wearing a crisp white shirt and thinking "oh, dear, no..."

[Frederic Leighton]

I don't I've never seen anyone wearing a crisp white shirt and thought "oh, dear, no..."

Thanks for making me laugh, Luca.

I ordered a new lot of shirts last Friday after two weeks of thorough 'investigations' -- well... all white shirts I already, and often, end up with unusual choices on other compartments, but white shirts always seem to be the best choice.

[Scot]

I don't I've never seen anyone wearing a crisp white shirt and thought "oh, dear, no..."

Really?



I think I prefer

[Luca]

Hang on.

Dave Milliband is wearing a black or extremely dark blue "politician suit" with a purple (PURPLE!!!) satiny tie and his own pasty self standing in front of a vomit-coloured background under harsh lights and the problem is his white shirt?
Really??


I'm not saying that we should all only ever buy white shirts or that checked shirts are a poor choice; just that, on the whole, white shirts work very well and allow for a lot of expression elsewhere whereas a checked shirt usually requires the rest of the ensemble to be quite conservative, in order to work.

This falls within the phenomenon (I daren't type "rule") of any "interesting" item tending to look best when the rest of the apparel is very conservative.

[Scot]

I don't recall ever seeing anyone wearing a crisp white shirt and thinking "oh, dear, no..."

Luca, the choice of photos was a dirty trick but the point I was trying to make, in response to your comment above, is that this very reaction afflicts me all the time - when the white shirt is NOT worn with anything remotely resembling sartorial "expression". It is so often worn by the bland, deliberately seeking to appear bland. This is not, by any means, the same as saying the white shirt always represents a failure of imagination, but it can.

[aston]

Worse still that Millibland's shirt probably has a fused collar and single button cuffs...............

[Luca]

Luca, the choice of photos was a dirty trick but ... white shirt [can] represent a failure of imagination

I agree with both statements.
Like I said before, if one avers towards quite cosnervative fabrics in a suit, then ideally the shirt should be a bit more lively, yes.

[Costi]

Can't go wrong with a white shirt (at least not because of the white shirt).
Can rarely go wrong with a light blue one, too.
Checks can be great if tastefully chosen and worn. But one can go terribly wrong with them, too... I like them a lot with tweeds (herringbones, Harris).

[hectorm]

Can't go wrong with a white shirt (at least not because of the white shirt)

From a purist point of view, I believe you could indeed go wrong, and precisely because it´s a white shirt.
White shirts have their history and evolution. From undergarments to outer ones. They have their symbolism (wealth, purity, cleanliness, etc.) and their correct place (more formal, city, business, etc.).
IMO, for instance, you would basically go wrong if -for your country outing- you chose as a first option to wear a plain white shirt with your plain or herringbone heavy tweed jacket.
Can you go worst by choosing a checked or colored shirt? Certainly. But playing it safe shouldn´t be the point in dressing and surely doesn´t make it right.

[Costi]

From a white-pure point of view, you may be right, hectorm. Rodes was referring to dress shirts, so I stuck with his subject.
Nevertheless, I could see a white linen or oxford shirt paired with a tweed jacket quite well. I can't search image archives right now, but if anyone has an eloquent example, that would be nice to see.
But I am not disparaging check shirts at all! I have quite a few, in all check sizes, and I enjoy wearing them.