Formal Shirts

The traditional English formal shirt is a garment which features: cuffs, a collar, and a vertical opening down the front centre lined with buttons. While this style of shirt is named a 'formal' shirt in the UK, it's named a 'dress' shirt in the US. A 'formal' shirt should classically be worn with a tie or a bow tie for formal occasions, but, it can be worn with an open collar for casual occasions. There are a large variety of formal shirts, which, to the untrained eye may look identical. However, these designs have small but key design alterations, which most commonly are the: the type of collar, the pattern of the material.

The pattern of a formal shirt can be categorised into three broad styles.

1. Plain
2. Check
3. Stripe

Listed below, you will find a list of formal shirt designs.

Windsor - Designed to fit a Windsor style neck tie. The Windsor knot is larger than an average tie, so the spread of the collars is larger to fit this style of tie.

Tab - Includes a fastening at the rear of the neck tie so as to keep a even collar shape.

Wing - Designed for use with a bow tie, the collar is much smaller, with just two small tabs to provide plenty of horizontal room for the bow tie.

Straight - One of the most common collars, which is able to accommodate a wide selection of neck ties which are narrower than the full Windsor knot.

Button-down - The end of the tabs of collars features buttons which fasten down. This helps to keep the collars from becoming misplaced and uneven.

Mandarin - Of oriental heritage. The collar does not fold down, therefore, you cannot wear a neck tie with this style of collar.