1. Don’t fall for custom shirt makers that don’t take at least 9 measurements.

Some custom dress shirt makers (especially on the internet) say that they have a magic formula and that all you need to give them is your height, weight, and a few other descriptions which don’t measure the size of your body parts, this generally results in a poorer fit than if at least nine measurements were taken. That said, it can still result in a good fitting shirt, but if all other things are equal it won’t be better than taking measurements (if for example the two different methods were performed by the same tailor).

2. Watch out with tailors that have too much pride

For many, especially upscale tailors, they often consider their work to be a form of art. This can both be good and bad. However, at times customers end up blindly listening to the advice of tailors since they believe that they know best. The advice of these ‘tailors of pride’ can turn confident customers that knew what they wanted when entering the shop become uncertain and blindly follow the advice of the tailor.

3. The fabric of the custom dress shirt is not the most important element

Although fabric is one of the most important things of the dress shirt, design and fit are actually more crucial to a dress shirt you will be satisfied with. When most people buy a dress shirt their initial buying behavior is based on how the fabric looks and how he can expect it to fit. This is obviously very subjective, but one thing for sure if you are not an extremely picky clothing shopper, you will probably be satisfied with any fabric with a yarn count of 50 – 80 (for more info on this see our dress shirt fabric posting).

4. Custom men’s dress shirts made in Asia can be better than in the West

Too many times have we heard that if its made in China, Thailand, Vietnam it must be of bad quality. This is far from true when it comes to custom dress shirts. Just by looking at this statistically there are probably 10 times as many tailors in Asia than in the West. That being said only a handful of these are truly skillful, but there are still many to be found due to the sheer number of them, it’s just harder to find the right one. Nowadays, even high end brands get some of their dress shirts made in China.

So don’t fear Asia, just come with a recommendation in hand.

5. There are a lot more design options than you are shown. Be creative (if you want)..

Custom men’s dress shirt makers some how lack the ability to show the many design options there actually are for dress shirts. That means that you have to picture what the shirt will look like in your mind. Tailors rarely tell customers that they can actually get other fabrics placed on different areas of the shirt. There are millions of possibilities with this, but its unfortunately just so hard to imagine.

We believe that far too often has the art of tailoring become focused on fit rather than design.

There is a whole lot more to know about dress shirts before buying. Be sure to download our FREE “Book of Dress Shirts” a guide to button down dress shirts.

Don’t go and buy your custom men’s dress shirts yet, you need to read the “Book of Dress Shirts” first. This book will tell you exactly what you need to know to get the right fit and the right style for your custom men’s dress shirts. It’s a 70 page book full of inspiration and it’s yours for FREE! Sign up with your email and name in the right hand column now and get the ebook version as soon as its ready absolutely free.

 It will be coming out in print later on and is valued at about USD 40, so be sure to get it before we put a price on the ebook as well.

Learn more about this guide to men’s button down dress shirts here.