Fabric
The fabric that your shirt is made of is the most important factor. A shirt rests directly on your skin for more than 8 hours every day, so it is important to choose quality that is not only luxurious but also durable.
All of our shirts are made from 100% cotton. We do sometimes offer shirts that are a mix of cotton and cashmere but this purely to provide additional warmth and added luxury during the winter months. Shirts mixed with polyester or any other fibres should definitely be avoided.
Yarn Count
It is common to see a number (such as 80s, 100s, 120s etc) on shirt fabrics to denote the quality of the shirt fabric. The number relates to the thickness of yarn and how many threads there are per square inch. The higher the number, the thinner (and finer) the yarn and the more threads there are per square inch. Accordingly a shirt with a 120 yarn count is more luxurious than a shirt with an 80 yarn count.
Shirts with higher yarn counts are more luxurious and softer on the skin, but as a result they are easier to wrinkle and not as durable as shirts with lower yarn counts. For shirts to be worn for work (i.e.for a minimum of 8 hours a day) we always recommend a yarn count of 120 which provides the necessary luxury as well as the required durability. For shirts to be worn for special occasions (such as our tuxedo shirts) we offer them with a yarn count of 140 as these shirts are typically worn less and reserved for special occasions.
Single Ply or Double Ply
This relates to the number of yarns twisted together to make a single thread. Cotton can be 1-ply, but in order to prevent the piling of fabric and to increase the quality, two yarns are twisted tougher to make a single thread. All of our shirts are 2-ply fabrics because they lend a smoother and more crisp handfeel.
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