Charvet ★

Commissioning a shirt

A bespoke shirt begins with measurement and a paper pattern cut for the customer, then a trial shirt in most cases, then the order. Houses at this level normally require a minimum order, several shirts rather than one, because the pattern-making is the expensive part and is amortised across the order.

The details that separate a bespoke shirt from a good ready-to-wear one are mostly invisible: a collar attached by hand so it sits closer to the neck, a sleeve set by hand, hand-sewn buttonholes, a pattern matched across the yoke and the front, and a fit through the shoulder and armhole that no size run can produce.

Ties and furnishings

Charvet's ties are made from its own silks and constructed to a standard that puts them among the small number worth their price. The house also makes dressing gowns, pyjamas and the rest of the furnishings trade it has occupied since the nineteenth century.

The shop's range of shirting is the reason people travel to it: several floors of cloth, held in stock, in quantities and varieties no competitor attempts.

The invention of the shirt shop

Charvet's historical claim is specific and unusually well supported: it was the first establishment to make shirts to measure for anyone who came through the door, rather than for an existing clientele of the sort a private tailor served. That sounds like a small distinction and it created the modern shirt trade.

The other thing the house is known for is the sheer extent of the cloth selection, which functions as a genuine service rather than a display: a customer with an exact colour in mind is more likely to find it here than anywhere else, and the staff's ability to navigate it is part of what is being bought.