How I Unlocked the Perfect One-Shirt Wardrobe

If a normal person were to see the shirts hanging in my closet, they’d no doubt wonder at my sanity for owning so many solid blue shirts. But of course, this is #menswear and we all know a blue shirt is never just a blue shirt.

And indeed one reason I have so many blue shirts is that all these years, I’ve felt like I’ve been grasping in the dark trying to find that one perfect shirt, the one that I just never have to think twice about throwing on in the morning.

I had an inkling of what such a shirt might be, but held off on custom-buying one from Proper Cloth or Spier & Mackay custom shirts because it seemed not only too obvious, but somewhat redundant.

But I finally did custom-order it, and it has arrived, and I’m sitting here basking in the simple-yet-transcendent beauty of what just might be, that one perfect shirt.

Put another way: If I only had one shirt in my wardrobe, this just might be it. And it’s dead-simple:

An OCBD, but with a spread collar. 

In particular for my style, a tall Italian wide-spread collar.

Typing that seems so obvious—and like I said I’d suspected for a long time this just might be it—but in case you need convincing, allow me to lay out 3 reasons it’s perfect.

Why it’s perfect

1. Oxford cloth is low-maintenance
   1. One reason I own so many OCBDs is that you can wash them, hang them to dry, then just wear them. Even with a tie, an un-ironed OCBD is great, and in fact Oxford cloth is almost better when it’s un-ironed. It’s a bit rumpled, relaxed and comfortable but not sloppy if you’re dressing up a bit, speaking of which:
2. Oxford cloth walks the line between dressy and casual with perfect aplomb
   1. Other fabrics might wear really well un-ironed, like chambray, but are too casual to wear with more dressy tailored looks (it definitely takes a well-considered combo of patterns, textures and fabrics to wear a tie with chambray—the kind of topic you can learn more about in my eBook, on sale now for 30% off using code 2023). The more finely woven pinpoint Oxford might do OK, though it’s a dressier fabric so any rumpling will look sloppy instead of relaxed. Oxford cloth has just the right beefiness to come across as a little casual when un-ironed, but also a just-fine-enough weave to pull off with a tie.
3. A spread or wide-spread collar puts a rakish spin on the shirt
   1. My issue with OCBDs is they feel a bit dowdy. A little too aging-professor-of-the-humanities. Like most men, I want to feel cool, and to feel like my outfit is a little extra. While it’s a subtle detail for most people, a spread collar (or wide-spread/cutaway) worn either with a tie or open-necked comes across as more debonair than a button-down. I favor tall Italian spread collars (at Proper Cloth, the soft Roma cutaway collar; at Spier & Mackay, the C21 large Italian full spread collar), because the tall collar band makes them sit taller when worn open, which feels masculine and stylish to me more than a floppy button-down.

I opted to order this shirt from Proper Cloth instead of Spier & Mackay because their entry-level heavy Oxford cloth is a known quantity that I love. It has a great shade of blue with just the right brightness value. Spier & Mackay’s downfall as an online MTM shirtmaker is their fabric photos and information are dismal (all problems Rick the owner says he is putting his energy into fixing this year). The other reason is that Proper Cloth restored/fixed the soft Roma cutaway collar, which for 4-5 years had wandered in the desert of generic-and-smallness.

Here are the design details I opted for

I think this design combo is just about perfect (I might experiment in the future with a French placket to see if that makes it feel even more refined):

Light blue heavy Oxford fabric 

Soft Roma Cutaway collar

Soft wide front placket

Soft long one-button cuff

Single-piece yoke

No rear pleats

No side darts

No pocket

The result is so good, I am seriously tempted to order one or two more of this exact shirt to have in rotation multiple times per week in blue.

And the other colors I’d strongly consider would be pink university stripe and maybe green. I’ve had poor experience with their blue university stripe heavy Oxford in the past (it would fade to purple; I wonder if they’ve fixed that), otherwise that’d be a no-brainer too.

One potential drawback to this shirt

If there is a drawback, it’s simply that Oxford cloth is sometimes too heavy to wear in the heat.

In those months I lean heavily into cotton-linen shirts (including a cotton-linen Oxford cloth from ProperCloth) as well as open-weave-cottons like lightweight chambray and dobby fabrics.

But for the majority of the year, I think if I were going to reduce down my closet to a simple capsule wardrobe, this would be my choice for the one-shirt wardrobe.

How about you? Do you agree? Do you have a different shirt fabric/design that you think suits you in almost every circumstance? Let me know!

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Shop my clothing from this post and every other post on the Shop My Closet page. If you’re just getting into tailored menswear and want a single helpful guide to building a trend-proof wardrobe, buy my eBook. It doesn’t cost that much and covers wardrobe essentials for any guy who wants to look cool, feel cool and make a good impression. Formatted for your phone or computer/iPad so it’s not annoying to read, and it’s full of pretty pictures, not just boring prose. Buy it here.