An Introduction to Dress Shirts
The dress shirt is a button-up shirt with a collar and long sleeves. It is cut differently than the sport shirt, which is made to be worn open-necked and looks awkward with a tie. The dress shirt is designed to carry a jacket and tie, but can be worn without one or the other, or with neither. Various shirts with different sorts of collars and cuffs are appropriate for different ranges of attire, and many can run the gamut of formality. We do not discuss the short-sleeve shirts here as that their lack of sleeves prevents them from being worn with a jacket, a prerequisite for a dress shirt. Over the past half-century, the dress shirt has gone from being an undergarment to holding a prominent place in many outfits. This is one reason why it is today available in so many more colors and patterns than the plain white ubiquitous in days past. Additionally, when most working men’s jobs involved getting their hands dirty, clean white cuffs were a status symbol, a symbol that the ma...
