The online made-to-measure shirt tailor Modern Tailor is offering a $19.95 introductory offer for shirts in their simplest blue oxford fabric. I’ve been looking for a couple of plain blue button-down oxfords, and for $24.95 each I bought three. The extra $5 was because I opted for thick mother of pearl buttons. Shipping added $20 to the total.
My measurements were based upon a made-to-measure oxford by my shirt maker, CEGO in New York (who I recommend wholeheartedly, by the way). If you don’t have a great-fitting shirt to base your measurements upon, I would be careful ordering more than one shirt.
I’ve been a bit skeptical of online made-to-measure, frankly, but I get many emails from folks who can’t find a shirt that fits them because of an unusual body type, and not everyone can afford $125-200 per shirt for a traditional custom shirt. For those people, operations like Modern Tailor and Jantzen can be a good option, though fabric can’t be inspected in person and one doesn’t get consultation from an expert.
We’ll see how these turn out. I’m already worrying about whether they’ll account for laundry shrinkage. Still, $25 is less than Lands’ End, and nothing ventured, nothing gained. Looking forward to the shirts’ arrival.
