Structured shirts, mostly Stenstroms

What structured means here

A structured shirt has a collar built to stay up. That comes from the interlining, the layer between the outer collar fabric and its lining.

If the interlining is heat bonded to the collar fabric, the collar is fused. Fused collars give the most structure and support. Proper Cloth, a shirtmaker, says they also stay smooth and pucker-free through repeated laundering; the counter-view in the trade is that fused interlinings can bubble or delaminate with age, so treat durability as contested rather than settled. They also mould through the day into a slight S shape that stops the collar collapsing under a jacket lapel, and they look sharper with a tie.

If the interlining is sewn in rather than bonded, the collar is unfused or floating. It keeps the flexibility and character of the cloth, but it will develop some puckering around the edges as it ages.

Fused construction suits the classic business cloths: pinpoint, twill and broadcloth. Unfused suits textured linens and oxfords, which is where most of our casual shirts sit.

Interlining weight runs from roughly 50g up to 400g, and that weight matters more to how the collar behaves than whether it is fused or floating.

The collar is a separate decision from the fit

This is the part that trips people up on European shirts, and Stenstroms in particular.

Collar size, given in centimetres, controls the neck. Fit name controls the body. They are independent choices, and getting one right does not get you the other.

Stenstroms describes Slimline as tailored but not too tight, a slim cut with a plain back. Fitted Body is described as their most common model, slightly tailored, with two pleats in the back for better mobility. Stenstroms now labels that page Regular (Fitted Body), which confirms it: the brand's own regular fit is the one called Fitted Body, and that is not obvious from the name.

So if you wear a 15.5 inch collar and take a medium in a slim-fit high street shirt, you are choosing between a 39 or 40 collar, and separately between Slimline and Fitted Body. Nobody on the web sets that out, which is why we have.

Collar shapes, in numbers

A straight point collar has points roughly 2.5 to 4 inches apart. A spread collar runs roughly 3.5 to 8.5 inches. A cutaway is the widest, generally 6.5 to 8.5 inches.

Those two published ranges disagree with each other slightly, which is worth knowing if you are comparing charts across sites. We have given both rather than pick one and present it as settled.

The practical guidance holds regardless: wider spread takes a bigger tie knot and suits a wider face, narrower points suit the reverse, and a cutaway under an open jacket is the sharpest of the three without a tie.

Cuffs

Barrel cuffs are the standard, fastened with one or two buttons. French or double cuffs have an extra length of sleeve folded back and fastened with links, and they are more formal than barrel. Single cuffs are the most formal of all and are usually only worn with formal evening wear.

If you are buying for a wedding and are unsure which the invitation implies, a double cuff is almost always the safe answer for a daytime suit, and a single cuff belongs with black tie.

Non-iron, and what it actually is

Non-iron shirts are made by dipping the cloth in a chemical resin and heat curing it, which bonds the cotton fibres to each other and makes the fabric much harder to crease. The resins are formaldehyde based and the process has been in use since the 1920s. Different markets set different residual limits, so we are not going to publish a single safety figure.

Stenstroms shirts are not sold as non-iron, and the reason is handle. The same treatment that stops the creasing also stiffens the cloth and takes some of the softness out of it. If you want a shirt you never iron, this is not the collection. If you want a shirt that feels like cotton, it is.

What we could not find out

Thomas Maine's sizing convention is not published anywhere we could verify, and Stenstroms' own site blocks crawling, so the fit descriptions above come from a stockist reproducing the brand's guidance rather than from Stenstroms directly. We have flagged both rather than present them as settled.