The Button Suit

Throughout the Business community, buttoned shirts are customary for men's attire. A buttoned shirt with trousers is designated as business casual. Adding a tie and jacket brings the attire up to business formal. Buttoned shirts are also worn with a classic tuxedo. In the case of a Tuxedo the shirt is white. There is flexibility in business formal shirts, but the shirt is generally a single color, often white, or white with thin stripes. Business causal shirts are slightly more flexible still, but they do not generally consist of eye-catching patterns.

Dress shirt measurements consist of two numbers. The first number is the girth of the neck in inches. The second number is the length of the sleeve. Dress shirts tend to be cut long because the two-button cuffs allow the shirt to be shortened. Shirts found on the racks of department stores also contain a three-size system: small, medium, and large. Many companies have expanded this system for even larger wearers with sizes such as "XL" (extra large), "XXL" (extra, extra large), and so forth. More formal declarations for belly fit are: "trim, athletic," or "tailored" fit for smaller bellies or "traditional," and "regular" for larger bellies.

There are two types of custom shirts. A tailor makes bespoke shirts for the wearer with physical access to the client. The tailor can measure the client and design the shirt with special attention to the details of the client's body. A tailor based on measurements provided by the client makes made-to-measure shirts. These shirts are also closely fitted to the client, but without the professional eye of the tailor to make special considerations. Custom-made shirts are made to fit the client perfectly, but they often run slightly long with the cuff catching at the hand. This prevents the potentially embarrassing situation of having a shirt that appears too short for the wearer. Alternatively, expert tailors may cut the sleeve especially for the client so that it hangs just at the wrist. In such cases, the tailor's expertise is essential because subtle differences in movement and posture can render the cut incorrect.

Styles of buttoned shirts vary widely. In casual wear, buttoned shirts may contain plaid or custom patterns, but business situations call for a more reserved material. Plain shirts of a certain color or shirts with pin stripes are called for in business settings. Still, styles vary widely. The cuffs, color, material and hang of the fabric all vary widely depending on the shirt manufacturer and the specific style of the shirt in question.

Three notable color types are spread colors, straight (traditional) colors, and buttoned down colors. Spread colors have a wide measure of 3.5 to 6 inches between the points of the color. The measure of straight colors is more modest with a distance of 2.5 to 3.5 inches. Buttoned down colors can be spread or straight, but they have the added feature of buttons for the points of the color.

Fashionable buttoned shirts vary widely in styles, but for business situations, Get-smart.biz recommends limiting designs to a solid color or white with thin stripes. Still, the variety of cuts and styles for buttoned shirts leaves the fashion quite open for individual style.