A man picks up a shirt, reads the label, sees the word polyamide and puts it back. We understand the instinct. Most synthetic shirts deserve it. The three programmes on our shirt wall do not, and the difference between them is worth ten minutes of your time.
What a jersey dress shirt actually is
A normal dress shirt is woven. Threads cross over and under each other on a loom, which gives you a cloth that holds a crease, takes a starch, and does not move an inch more than it was cut to. A jersey shirt is knitted. The yarn loops through itself the way a T-shirt or a fine sweater is made, so the cloth stretches and recovers on its own, with no help from the pattern.
The trick, and the reason these cost what a good woven costs, is that the collar, the placket and the cuffs are built the way a woven shirt's are. Interlining in the collar, a proper stand, mother-of-pearl buttons, a barrel cuff. From three feet away it is a dress shirt. On the body it behaves like your favourite knit. It does not grab a sweater when you pull one over it, it does not crease in a suitcase, and it does not fight you when you reach for the back seat.
The fibres, honestly
Here is where the word synthetic stops being useful. The shirt that gave synthetics their bad name is cheap polyester: it traps heat, holds odour and goes shiny at the elbows. None of the three shirts below use it.
Polyamide is the fibre in the Italian jerseys. It is the same family as nylon, but spun fine as a microfibre and knitted, it is light, dry to the touch and strong enough that the shirt holds its shape through years of washing. Elastane is the stretch, and the percentage tells you how much the shirt gives. Xacus runs theirs at 13 per cent, Stenströms at 27, which is a large part of why they feel different on the body. Cotton with a little elastane, which is Bugatchi's route, is a woven that has been taught to move: the familiar hand of cotton, four-way stretch, no polyamide at all. And merino wool, in the programme Xacus runs with the Reda mill, is the oldest performance fibre there is, which we will get to.
Xacus Active: the layering shirt
Xacus has made shirts in San Vito di Leguzzano, in the Veneto, since 1956, and the house has always chased exclusive cloth harder than most. The Active shirt is knitted on a warp-knit machine from a Japanese 3D stretch jersey, 87 per cent polyamide with a share of Econyl recycled yarn and 13 per cent elastane, and it is sewn in Italy. The collar carries removable stiffeners so it sits sharp under a tie and clean when the jacket is open.
This is the shirt we send a man home with when he wears a sweater over a shirt four days a week. A cotton shirt bunches and sticks under a knit; the Active slides. You get in and out of a sweater without pulling the shirt out of your trousers, you get the collar and the cuff showing the way they should, and you give up nothing in comfort to get the look.
The other thing Xacus does, and almost nobody else does, is a graduated size scale. Every neck size from 37 to 46 has its own chest, waist, shoulder and sleeve, so a 39 is not a 42 with a smaller collar. On a lighter frame, or a man with a trim chest who still needs his collar size, that is the difference between a shirt that fits and a shirt that has been tailored. It is the reason the Active is our first suggestion for slimmer and smaller builds, and for anyone who lives in a jacket.
Xacus also runs a merino programme with Reda, the Biella wool mill founded in 1865 and run by the Botto Poala family for more than a century. The cloth is 100 per cent extra-fine merino from New Zealand stations that do not mulese, and it is wrinkle-free, breathable, naturally antibacterial and warm when it is cold and cool when it is not. We bring it in a few pieces at a time and it goes quickly. If you want one, tell us and we will find your size.
Stenströms: the heavier hand
Stenströms has sewn shirts in Helsingborg since 1899, and their jersey is knitted in Italy from polyamide microfibre and LYCRA, 73 per cent to 27, then built by Stenströms with the same moderate cutaway collar, the No. 71, that sits on their twills. Everything you know about a Stenströms collar, the way it holds after a year of washing, carries over to the jersey.
Where it differs from the Xacus is weight. The jerseys we choose from Stenströms are the ones cut from Albini cloth, the Bergamo mill that has been weaving shirting since 1876, and we choose them specifically because the cloth is heavier and drapes. A light jersey on a bigger man clings and shows every line underneath. The Stenströms jersey hangs, which is why it is our first suggestion for broader builds and for the man who wants a knit shirt that still reads like a dress shirt when it is tucked in.
They are sized small through 2XL rather than by neck, with a Slimline block on the dress styles and a one-fit Active Stretch Jersey that works across slim and regular builds because the knit does the adjusting. The black and the navy are the two we restock most, because they turn into evening shirts the minute the tie comes off.
Bugatchi: the untucked one
Bugatchi is the newest of the three on our floor and the most casual. The brand started in Montreal in 1981, runs out of Florida now, and built its name on print and on stretch. Its signature cloth is OoohCotton, a trademarked double-mercerised cotton knit the brand describes as eight-way stretch, quick-drying and antimicrobial for fifty washes. The pieces we opened the account with are the stretch wovens: 92 per cent cotton, 8 per cent elastane, four-way stretch, a curved shirttail hem that is cut to be worn out, and a collar with woven interlining so it holds whether you button it or not.
Think of it as the Saturday version of the other two. Over a chino with the sleeves rolled, under a sport coat for dinner, or on its own with dark denim, and it washes cold and tumbles low. It is sized small through 3XL in North American alpha sizing and runs true, with a half size of forgiveness in either direction from the stretch.
Which one is yours
Broader build, or you wear your shirts tucked and want the drape of a dress shirt: Stenströms. The heavier Albini cloth hangs instead of clinging.
Trimmer build, a jacket most days, or a sweater over your shirt all winter: Xacus Active. The graduated sizing fits the body, not just the neck, and nothing slides under a knit like it.
Weekends, travel, worn out over chinos or denim: Bugatchi. Cotton hand, real stretch, cut to be untucked.
And when to stay with a woven: a formal tie knot under a jacket you will not take off, a double cuff, a wedding where the photographs matter. The jersey will do it, but the crisp placket and the pressed sleeve of a woven dress shirt still win that day.