Recently I’ve become quite fond of the contrasting placket look. For those of you who don’t know what a placket is, a placket is the middle part of the dress shirt that supports the dress shirt buttons. Typically it comes in three different styles, seamless (or French), standard and concealed. Most people agree that the seamless is a bit more formal than the rest, but that’s not the point of this blog. Since we button and unbutton our shirts at least twice a day, the placket is quite an important component of the dress shirt. It should receive the same amount of attention and care as the other parts (i.e. the collar and the cuffs), but sadly it doesn’t. Most people don’t even know that this part of the dress shirt had a name!

Anyways, when I first saw the contrasting placket look, I was a bit skeptical. And by contrasting placket look I mean having the placket in a totally different color, usually same color as the collar and the cuffs. The contrasting colors really caught my attention for a while. I mean the placket isn’t a typical place on the dress shirt that people dared to play around with, let alone change the color to. However after re-examining it, I realized that it’s quite a unique and dashing look, especially when the placket color matches the collar and cuffs’ color. I think the long strip leading up to the collar really slims down the torso and accentuates the face. The contrasting color also brings attention to the base color of the dress shirt itself. So if you have a dull pink or navy dress shirt, adding a white placket could really spruce it up. Experiment with contrasting placket colors (which you can easily do on www.ShirtsMyWay.com) and see what you can come up with. Just keep in mind that certain combinations might not be suitable for your work environment.