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By Gerald Ortiz, Yang-Yi Goh, and Avidan Grossman
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The best white dress shirts will always be indispensable. Maybe you just bought your first suit. (Congratulations, and good luck at that interview.) Maybe you just bought your 50th. (Congratulations, and enjoy that office with the complimentary coffee-pod machine in the corner. Love a good coffee pod.) Or maybe you’re somewhere in between. But wherever you are in your suit-buying life, and no matter your suit-buying budget, this much is true: you can definitely use another white dress shirt to wear with them.
They’re what you need for every conceivable life event. Don’t believe us? Here, watch. First day of work: wear a white dress shirt. Last day of work: white dress shirt. Wedding? White dress shirt. Bar mitzvah? Confirmation? Graduation? White dress shirt. Funeral? Condolences, flowers, and a white dress shirt. You get the idea. And the white dress shirt is what you need in relatively advanced fashion situations, too. Pitti Uomo peacocks, red carpet heroes, and charity-dinner all-stars all have one secret weapon—besides the animal-pelt jackets and shawl-collar tuxedos and floor-through apartments. They have perfect white dress shirts. While we're at it, the right white dress shirt can even play it cool in more relaxed situations with a vintage pair of jeans and cowboy boots or for some high-low brilliance with a pair of baggy dress pants and skate shoes. But what separates the perfect from the workaday?
Here’s your answer: The perfect white dress shirt only needs to do a couple of things, but it needs to do them perfectly. Rule number one: no wimpy collars. Our favorites can all support a thick knot if that’s your thing, or will stand tall on their own sans tie. Rule two: They’re tailored to perfection. That often means that they're on the trimmer side, but definitely not skin-tight. With a little boldness and well-thought proportion play, a white dress shirt can look smashing in a relaxed silhouette. But the same rule applies for any silhouette when it comes to tucking them into your pants. That is, a good white dress shirt should avoid that messy ballooning paper bag effect. Some of our picks are 100% cotton, some have a little stretch in the mix, but all of them are designed to stay crisp and are built to breathe.
And that, really, is reason enough to buy one, two, or all of the dress shirts we’ve picked out here. They’ll help you stay cool in every conceivable way—whether you're on suit number one, 50, or somewhere in between.
Super Non-iron Slim-fit Long-sleeve Shirt
Material: 100% cotton pinpoint Oxford, 2-ply, ultra-fine Collar: Spread Placket: French Pocket: No Sizes: XS-3XL Fit: Slim
Uniqlo's non-iron shirt serves up major value with its crispy button-up. It's made using 2-ply ultra-long staple cotton which means it's both strong and soft, and the updated collar steers away from the overly slim collars we're used to seeing at this price point. Is it remaking the wheel? No—but that's not quite the Japanese retailer's MO. It's just a solid shirt at a solid price, two distinguishing characteristics that usually sit on opposite ends of the value proposition. Usually being the operative word here, of course, because we usually aren't this excited to drop three Hamiltons on a dress shirt. The next time a swanky RSVP hits your inbox and you've already hit your monthly menswear allowance, make an exception for this sucker and watch it pay dividends down the line.
Material: 100% cotton broadcloth Collar: Spread Placket: Front Pocket: No Cuff: Double French Cuff Sizes: 39-43 Fit: Slim
If pedigree is a thing you care about—or, more precisely, can afford to care about—in your dress shirts, then Charvet is the move. The Parisian institution opened the world's first shirt shop in 1838, conceived the first-ever shirts with attached collars and cuffs, and have dressed everyone from JFK and Obama to Proust and Matisse. Today, their shirts are meticulously constructed by a team of only 50 tailors—each trained for at least four years—from the most beautiful fabrics in the world, like this ultra-soft cotton number with an understated sheen and real-deal mother-of-pearl buttons. If you don't think a plain white dress shirt can scream "PURE LUXURY," it means you haven't the privilege of slipping on one of these old-world grails.
Tailored Slim Premium Poplin Dress Shirt
Material: 100% cotton poplin, 2-ply, 120s Collar: Spread Placket: Front Pocket: No Cuff: Rounded single button Sizes: XS-XXL Fit: Tailored slim
Banana Republic's enjoyed a refreshing comeback (like so many other mall brands), so it makes sense that, as the more sophisticated, well-to-do sibling of Gap and Old Navy, they would know how to make a great dress shirt. The fabric is on-point and the details aren't overwrought or needlessly fancy. While the ‘tailored slim’ fit is also great, many brands manage to walk straight into the pitfall that is a collar that's too narrow for its own good—not this one. The collar is a classic size that feels neither too modern nor too stuffy, one that you won't feel embarrassed to wear years down the line. Plus, for a shade under a hundred bucks, it's hard to compete.
Material: 100% cotton poplin Collar: Point Placket: Front Pocket: Yes Cuff: Rounded single button Sizes: XS-XXL Fit: Oversized
It might be obvious, but dress shirts are built for dressy occasions. But the casual-formal spectrum is just that—a spectrum. Not every shirt needs to be pressed to high hell and paired with a suit and tie; just look to the increasingly common casual wedding and you'll see what we mean. For those in-between situations where a clean collared shirt is required but elbows on the dinner table are not, Alex Mill's Easy shirt fits the bill. The fabric is a smooth, lightweight all-cotton poplin without the built-in non-iron treatment so it can take some rumpling and look pretty damned good for it too. The fit is relaxed and ideal with some baggy chinos and sneakers (a.k.a the everyday non-dressy dress shirt) And should you need to clean up a bit, just give it a good iron press and you'll make it through the formal function without anyone batting an eye.
Material: 100% cotton herringbone Collar: Point Placket: Front Pocket: No Cuff: Rounded single button Sizes: 14.5-18 Fit: Slim
Hamilton's generations-long pedigree in handmade shirts is enough reason to cop one for yourself, but this link-up with Todd Snyder gives you another excuse. With a subtle herringbone weave and a perfected fit that sits high on the armholes for a clean silhouette, you'll look like you just got back from your bespoke tailor. Add to that a gorgeous set of hand-carved mother of pearl buttons and a pitch-perfect point collar and you've got yourself one handsome shirt that'll really impress the Savile Row guys.
New York Slim-Fit Broadcloth Dress Shirt
Material: 100% cotton broadcloth Collar: Spread Placket: French Pocket: No Cuff: Barrel Sizes: 39-43 Fit: Slim
The Japanese have a knack for adopting elements of American culture, obsessing over it, and then selling it back to us better and purer than we do it ourselves. Blue jeans became a real thing over there beginning in the postwar ‘50s; now brands like Kapital are leading the pack in the denim game. On the culinary side of things, they saw our greasy cheesesteaks and raised us immaculate wagyu sandos. And after Ivy League style took hold in Japan, labels like Kamakura Shirts emerged to pick up the slack once the Brooks Brothers and J.Presses of the world began to wane in quality and veer from the true preppy-trad path. For a quarter-century now, Kamakura has been turning out top-notch, unmistakably American shirts with a price-to-quality ratio it's sometimes hard to find stateside these days. This one is cut trim and streamlined from a pinpoint Oxford cloth, with the kind of perfectly-sized point collar guys like Paul Newman used to dig. It's the sort of dress shirt you pick up and look over and mutter, "They don't make 'em like this anymore." Only they do—just not here.
Wornwell Single Needle Dress Shirt
Buck Mason simply cannot be stopped. Lightweight cotton poplin sans non-iron finish (devil may care!), fancy mother of pearl buttons, and an easy fit reminiscent of your favorite romcom heart throb.
Cotton Pinpoint Spread Collar Shirt
Leave it to the tailoring extraordinaires at The Armoury to make a perfect take on the crisp white dress shirt. This collaborative effort with 100 Hands offers some of the finest handwork in any dress shirt for a price that's hard to believe.
Brioni's Bond-approved dress shirts–the venerable Italian tailoring label kitted out Daniel Craig in Casino Royale—don't come cheap, but international-man-of-mystery looks rarely do.
Sid Mashburn's distinct brand of American casual tailoring blends timeless details with high-quality craftsmanship. The result is a great-fitting shirt that punches well above its price tag.
With a smidge of elastane and a wrinkle-resistant treatment, this shirt will look and feel as comfortable in the office as it does on a plane.
Perhaps the most underrated of the famed Antwerp Six, Marina Yee's warped lens of closet staples brings a new perspective to the dress shirt that tosses out the rule book.
When you're in a pinch and next-day shipping is the only thing that'll save you from looking woefully underdressed, Amazon is your friend. And wouldn't you know it, Calvin Klein's squeaky clean dress shirt is pretty damned good even if it wasn't on the Bezos Boutique.
Custom Fit French Cuff Tuxedo Shirt
Just because Ralph Lauren himself can pull off this shirt a satin shawl tuxedo jacket, shredded jeans, and hiking boots, doesn't mean you can. But you should know that it's definitely possible.
It's hard to break into the well-established world of menswear classics and actually stand out. Somehow, Thom Browne did just that. With his inimitable cropped proportions and grosgrain accents, a Thom Browne button-up has become an aspirational piece of menswear few others have ever achieved.
American-Made Oxford Cloth Button-Down Dress Shirt
Countless brands have put their spin on the button-down collar shirt, but Brooks Brothers is the one that did it first.
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By The Editors of GQ
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