Broggers Quarterly: The Fit Guide to Shirts

Any piece of clothing you are considering buying should fit you. Many people size up for the sake of comfort, but clothes can be comfortable and look good on you too. I always see shirts that are too big for a guy, but I don't think most people are going for the Urban gangster look on campus... Here's a quick-guide to how shirts should fit your body:

First, check the length of the shirt. A button-up dress shirt is cut longer than a casual button-up shirt so make sure what you're looking for is what you want. Here's the difference of what it looks like when you wear a dress shirt casually the wrong way and a casual button-up the right way.
Very good, gypsy. I will look at your treasures. In the first picture, you can see the shirt drops down to where the pants leg separate into two. This shirt is too long to be worn untucked. On the right side, you can see the length difference. An untucked button-up shirt should drop right past the waist to avoid a baggy or over-sized look.

If something feels too tight, do the "I'm an airplane" trick. Arms straight up. Arms side to side. Wave arms in circles. Whooooosh. I guess this might be a better example: If you can't fully extend any part of your body and move around comfortably enough to run around - it's too small. Although, if you have fabric bunching up at your arm, shoulders, and the shirt is poofing outwards when you tuck it in - it's too big. Everything should fit comfortably flush with your body so you can show it off.

Sleeves should reach your wrist bone and should have no excess fabric bunching up near it or on the sides. The shirt should run flush with your arm and hug your shoulders. No poofing either on the sides for tucked-in shirts. Walk around to see if it poofs with movement or with your arms raised. The picture on the left shows both excess sleeve material and poofiness from the sides. On the right, we can see how it's showing off his figure because of the right fit. Sexytime.

What about short sleeved shirts and polos? The same applies, but now you don't have any sleeves to worry about! Yay one less thing to consider.

When considering a button-up short sleeve, make sure it just fits your body. Before you even button-up the shirt, pull the two sides past each other - how much room is there? If you can pull one side of the shirt past the buttons, consider sizing down. It should reach flush with your body when buttoning up. Alternatively, you could button-up the shirt and see if you can fit a fist through your shirt from the top - it's too big if you have successfully Over-9000-Gundam-punched through it.

For polos, have it sit just past your waist. The sleeves should be right between your elbow and shoulder, so you can partially show off those guns of yours. You can see this in the two pictures above.

Next time I'll write about shirts in more detail, but for now, go find a shirt that fits you. (photos courtesy of GQ and JCrew)