Photographer Glen Allsop recently posted images of the limited-edition art book of his photos for my favorite Eidos season, Il Cuore di Pescatore (spring/summer 2015). That season, Eidos made the perfect chambray shirt. With the signature “Marcus” collar (a big, wide cutaway with a tall collar band), beautiful mother of pearl buttons, in the perfect shade of light wash indigo, and styled in Eidos’ work shirt design (which is the best work shirt design I’ve seen on from a high-end label, e.g. not an actual work shirt LOL), it was an instant grail. Sadly, when I ordered it that season, it fit horrendously. Antonio Ciongoli, creative director, explained Italian factories had great difficulty producing garment washed products right, as that’s not something they typically do, so the production run of the shirt was extremely short in both the body and sleeves.
Chambray and denim shirts have enjoyed surging popularity the past decade. For most who shop at places like Gap or J.Crew, they perfectly straddle the line between dressy and casual, since it’s a button up shirt but in a workwear fabric. Even if you weren’t wearing Red Wing boots with selvedge jeans, the vague sense of Americana and “heritage” that came with a chambray shirt could also make you feel good.
For people like me, I was always most interested in them as a way to make tailored clothing more approachable in the 21st century. A chambray shirt can do so marvelously, just as wearing jeans with a tailored jacket can. I have a few chambray and denim shirts in my collection now, and have reached a few conclusions that I thought I’d share.
Chambray or denim?
Chambray is typically what you’ll find from the menswear brands I write about. However, denim shirts exist as well. What’s the difference and which is better? Denim is twill, with a tighter weave, while chambray is a more loosely woven plain weave. That makes chambray wear cooler. Because of that, I find that denim shirts work best in the cold months.
Heavy-weight denim shirts are great because the fabric has a heavy drape and because it breaks in so nicely. Western shirts and more rugged-inspired work shirts are the natural make-up for a heavier denim shirt and look really cool under a sport coat. But of course, a heavy weight shirt isn’t what you want to be wearing when it’s 80°F out. I have a heavy weight denim shirt from Proper Cloth, which I made using their soft Roma cutaway collar, and in a popover configuration. For my style, which tries to bridge the gap between the utilitarian and the aesthetically beautiful, it works really well.
Light weight denim is very smooth and soft. I recently reviewed a lightweight denim shirt from Besnard, and it’s probably softer than any other shirt I own. Spier & Mackay also recently released some lightweight denim shirts that sold out instantly. It’s very comfortable, but its dense weave makes them very prone to running warm despite the light weight. And I’ve found it shows sweat extremely easily, so a lightweight denim shirt works best worn under a jacket that will hide that.
Many makers have taken denim and made really cool shirts with a dressier vibe. As mentioned earlier, Besnard and Spier and Mackay, as well as Drake’s (sometimes in their long point collar for an old-school 90s look). While I prefer wide, tall Italian cutaway collars most of the time, the un-fussy look of a point collar work shirt worn under a sport coat holds appeal, and I just might try that cheap Wrangler everybody raves about.
Chambray is typically the best choice, then, for a shirt, in my opinion. It works in every cut and configuration that denim does—western, work shirts, dress-shirt-inspired—but wears cooler because it’s a more open weave. And because it usually isn’t too thin and gauzy, it’s a good choice all year.
My favorite chambray shirt is an Eidos work shirt made two seasons after the ultimate one from 2015 (it’s still amazing, just not that same perfect shade of indigo as the first). Its collar is that same big, Italian cutaway Antonio called the “Marcus”; totally unlined, it can be a bit floppy, but it rolls superbly under a jacket and looks rakish all on its own. The chest pockets have that ideal design like I mentioned, which makes it look great worn by itself, but are hidden when you put on a sport coat.
Some of the same makers I mentioned above who make good denim also make a good chambray. I was impressed by the denim shirt I got from Besnard, and their chambray looks great, too; Kamakura’s are great if they fit you; Proper Cloth does washed indigo chambray 5-6 times per year, or you can make one without the garment washing and just try to beat it to death in your own washer, though it’ll never quite have the same puckered seam look as a garment washed one. Todd Snyder, J. Crew, and Alex Mill all make the more mainstream-looking chambray shirts. Sid Mashburn has a dressier, not-garment washed option in sky blue, but also one made from linen as opposed to cotton that would wear even more cool in the summer. Anglo-Italian’s denim shirt has the perfect Italian button-down collar, and since it’s part of their regular collection, rest assured it will come back in stock if it’s sold out in your size.
Thankfully wearing chambray or denim shirts with tailoring is far easier and less fraught than wearing jeans with tailoring; at the end of the day, it’s just a blue shirt (albeit with a little bit of intentional wear). My only dictum would be to avoid suits and jackets made in dressier fabrics, particularly the more broken in and workshirt-y you go with the shirt.
But once you introduce a chambray shirt into your rotation, I think you’ll find it’s one of the coolest looks you can do with a tailored jacket in the 21st century.
(Help support this site! If you buy stuff through my links, your clicks and purchases earn me a commission from many of the retailers I feature, and it helps me sustain this site—as well as my menswear habit ;-) Thanks!) This post was originally published Apr. 22, 2020.
