How to shop for your perfect shirt

The endlessly versatile button-down will never go out of style. Try these tricks to get the right fit

Lisa Armstrong, Head of fashion 13 March 2024 • 8:00am

Plus: Lisa solves your fashion dilemmas below

Guess what the first item of clothing at the V&A’s recent monumental Chanel exhibition was?

Correct. A white shirt. OK, not white, but ivory, possibly discoloured – give it a break, it’s a hundred years old. And not a shirt, a blouse. But we’re getting into semantics. The point is, some concepts never get old.

That’s something to bear in mind when the moaners are moaning there’s nothing new in fashion. Not that they’re wrong, in the broadest sense. But why is that a bad thing? It means you can walk through Zara without that must-buy, must-buy, get-it-before-it’s-gone frenzy descending. (Yes, sometimes you do have to buy it before it’s gone, as with the Anya Hindmarch/Uniqlo collaboration, but those moments are rare. And something tells me that both parties will be returning to that particular union.)

Organic cotton, £62.95, Seasalt; Refibra™ cloth with pearl buttons, £250, Mother of Pearl; Military organic cotton drill, £275, Serena Bute

Got that, you can tell yourself. Or something similar. And instead you can focus on the thing you really do need/want.
The era of 10 or so new trends a season was mental – bung them in the time capsule along with smoking in restaurants or chucking litter out the window of your petrol-guzzling, non-seat-belt-equipped saloon. It was terrible for the planet obviously – and not great for us. When I say ‘us’, I mean the grown-ups. We’re also the ones who tend to groan about the so-called dearth of innovation. The kids are more than happy recycling all our 1990s cast-offs.

The decelerating cycle gives us all a chance to take stock of what we genuinely like and what works. The more you focus on those parts of the equation, the more you appreciate that much of fashion – and almost all of style – is about how you wear it.

Which leads us back to the shirt. The latest incarnations – there’s always something a bit new in fashion – are slightly shorter and neater than the oversized boyfriend style, and boxier. But it all depends on what suits your body.

Cotton poplin, £75, Cos; Gingham brushed cotton, £233.33, Emma Willis; Wrap front, £99, Aligne

If you’re petite, you might like a short one. When it’s hot, you can wear it as a lightweight jacket. Meanwhile, you may also want to be able to tuck it in. And to have it loose enough to layer over a T-shirt but not so baggy you can’t slip an outer layer over it – et voilà, the shirt sandwich (I don’t make up these names).

You could try wearing a shirt undone beneath certain jumpers, creating a spread-collar look that adds interest to dull necklines. Roll up the sleeves of your jumper to highlight the shirt’s cuffs.

WNU (With Nothing Underneath) excels at shirts. So does Emma Willis on London’s Jermyn Street, and I love the Mother of Pearl one above with its pearl buttons – a lovely touch that makes it perfect for evenings as well as day. Add a scarf, a necklace, a tank; perfect the art of knotting a jumper round the shoulders (or wearing it as an asymmetric scarf for a splash of colour). Or don’t.

Lisa wears: Poplin shirt, £95, With Nothing Underneath; Wool blend skirt, £115, Cos; Gold plated earrings, £168, Bevza; Patent shoes, £69, Charles & Keith; Hair and Make-Up: Oonagh Connor at Joy Goodman using Nars and Dr Paw Paw