After the suit, the next most important item of clothing for your professional work wardrobe is going to the shirt. You’ll want to have a range of shirts for different occasions but we’ll focus initially on what is going to work best for formal outfits. 

Unlike suits, which have been losing relevancy in modern workplaces, shirts have remained a mainstay of any outfit. Without much effort, you can elevate your look by paying attention to a few aspects of shirt style and fit. By investing in some good quality shirts you will find that they are useful in the most formal outfits as well as some more casual looks which we consider in other articles. These formal shirts will be worn with your suits as well as the outfits involving odd trousers and sports jackets.

What fabric is best for formal shirts?

The classic fabric is going to be cotton poplin which is a plain, lightweight, smooth fabric. It’s breathable, comfortable and has a crisp, clean appearance. There are also fabrics such as twill which can work but these are often a bit heavier. It’s worth having a few shirts in poplin that you can rotate so that they don’t wear out. 

For the fabric weight, the most versatile fabrics are going to be in the 120-150g range (measured in grams per square metre). These will give you a good balance between comfort and structure, allowing the shirt to drape nicely while still maintaining a crisp appearance. You don’t want to go too lightweight as this will crease much more easily during the day. If you are in a particularly cold location or the air conditioning in the office is turned up then you might be better off with a heavier fabric and you could go for twill or Oxford fabric.

For shirt colours, you definitely want to have at least a couple of white shirts and then a couple of plain light blue shirts. After that, you could think about a light pink. Vertically-striped shirts are also very useful, mainly in blue and white, especially if you have plain navy or charcoal suits. 

What style is best for formal shirts?

Having decided on the fabric the next step is to get the style of the shirt right. The most important aspect is the collar. You want this to be fairly large as you will want the option to button it to the top and wear it with a tie. You want to make sure that there is a decent amount of collar showing at the back when you wear a suit jacket over it. There are various shapes of collar ranging from very narrow (where the points face down) and extreme cutaway (where the points go back onto your shoulder). The best option is something in between: a semi-cutaway. This gives enough space for the tie knot to be fully on show and the points of the collar to hide under the jacket lapel when the jacket is being worn. This means that these shirts won’t need button down collars. These are more informal and less suitable to be worn with a tie. 

Don’t get a shirt with a breast pocket! You might be tempted to put a pen (or worse, a cell phone) in it. 

You can have the shirt with or without a placket (the vertical part of the shirt with the buttons). More formal shirts don’t have a placket but it doesn’t make too much difference if it does. They can help the collar stay up when not worn with a tie. 

Finally, the cuffs have various options. You can have double cuffs (or French cuffs) which are designed to use cufflinks, or single cuffs (using one or two buttons). It’s worth having at least one shirt with double cuffs and then some with single cuffs (one button is enough in our experience).  

How should a formal shirt fit?

The important points to note here are:

• The collar should fit snugly around the neck. You want to be able to get 1 or 2 fingers inside it. 
• The shoulder seams should more or less be on the end of your shoulder.
• The fit should be quite close through the body. Especially if you are slim, you will probably need to get an off-the-rack shirt altered to bring it in. An alterations tailor can put ‘darts’ in the back quite cheaply to achieve this.
• A bit more length at the bottom of the shirt can be useful as it helps keep the shirt in place when it is tucked in. These shirts would never been worn untucked. 
• The sleeve length should be long enough so that it peeps out from underneath a suit jacket. As the cuff tapers toward where the hand starts, it can be a bit longer when it is unbuttoned. 

Key tips:

• Start with some plain white or plain light blue poplin shirts in medium weights and then expand into more colours / designs from there.
• Make sure that the collar isn’t too small and that it will stand above a suit jacket.
• Get the shirt tailored if needed so that it is slim fit (although don’t go too far with this if you are a heavier build).
• Don’t have a breast pocket!