Chariot
0
Now that September has put jackets back on the men of Montreal, we would like to say a word for the garment underneath. The jacket gets the compliments, but the shirt does the work. It touches your skin all day, shows at the collar and cuff in every meeting, and quietly decides whether the whole outfit reads crisp or tired by four o'clock. Knowing how to choose a dress shirt — collar first, then fit, then cloth — is worth more than owning fifteen mediocre ones. And after years of fitting executives at the store on Decarie Boulevard, we can tell you most men shop in exactly the reverse order: they fall for a pattern and never once look at the collar.
How to choose a dress shirt: start at the collar
The collar frames your face. It is the part of the shirt people actually look at, and the part that fails first when chosen badly. Two tests. First, size: with the top button closed, one finger should slide in comfortably. Two fingers, the collar gapes; none, you will be tugging at it through your two o'clock. Second — and this is the modern question — does the collar stand up without a tie? Most Montreal offices have gone tie-optional, which means your collar spends most of its life unsupported. A properly constructed spread or cut-away collar, the kind ETON and Stenströms build, sits neatly under a jacket on its own. A soft, unlined point collar collapses by ten in the morning. Our opinion: if you wear a tie twice a year, buy every shirt as though you will wear it open, because you will.
Fit is shoulders and buttons, not the label
Slim, contemporary, regular — the names vary by maker and flatter nobody honestly. Ignore them and read the shirt on your body. The yoke seam should end at the edge of your shoulder. The buttons should lie flat with no pulling when you sit, because a placket that puckers across the chest is not a slim fit, it is a size too small. There should be enough room to reach across a boardroom table without the whole shirt heaving. Here is the part worth remembering: a shirt slightly full through the body is a fifteen-minute job for our tailors — we slim shirts in-house all week long. A shirt too small cannot be fixed by anyone. When in doubt, buy for your shoulders and neck, and let us handle the rest.
Cloth for a Montreal fall
Twill is the workhorse and the right place to start. It is dense enough for the season, drapes with a little weight, and irons beautifully — ETON's Signature Twill in particular has a fineness that keeps its surface calm through a full day. A white textured twill is the most useful shirt a man can own, and most men own too few of them. From there, oxford adds texture for jacket-and-no-tie days, and this is the season the brushed cloths earn their keep: ETON's cotton flannels and Stenströms' corduroys have the bearing of dress shirts with the warmth the first cold mornings on the way to the office demand. As for colour, we will say it plainly — brown is doing what navy did a decade ago. The chocolate brown herringbone twill from ETON is our favourite shirt on the wall this fall: unexpected in the best way under a grey flannel suit, and perfectly at home with a camel sport jacket.
Build the rotation in the right order
If you are starting fresh or rebuilding, resist the interesting shirt until the foundation exists. White twill first. Light blue second. A blue stripe third. Only then the herringbone, the contrast trim, the corduroy. The dull truth is that you need more white shirts than you own and fewer statement shirts than you think — the statement shirt gets remembered, which means it can only appear so often, while nobody has ever counted your white ones. Seven good shirts, rotated and properly laundered, will outlast fifteen bought carelessly, and they will fit better on day three hundred because good two-fold cotton holds its shape wash after wash.
Every shirt we sell can be tailored here in the store — sleeves, body, length — so it fits the way the maker intended it to fit you, not the mannequin. If your collar size has drifted since you last checked, or your shirts have quietly stopped working as hard as you do, book a visit and we will sort the rotation out together. The fall shirtings are on the wall now, and the good sizes never linger long.
