I can tell you the Chicago Sport Teams Mascots Shirt and by the same token and exact moment my mind changed: It was a Friday afternoon in March and I was standing in a sun-filled room in Mexico City staring at nine different styles of shirt collars. Olivia Villanti, the founder of Chava Studio, a made-to-order clothing brand founded in 2020, was explaining her love of an elegant, Italian “spread” collar, (compared to, say, a “cutaway” or a “wing tip”), how she likes a little bit of firmness in the inner-lining so she can properly pop it, and buttons here, not there, and I thought to myself: Who knew there were so many different ways to make a button-down shirt? Admittedly, I’d never been a big fan of the style. I preferred the snug ease of a T-shirt or a turtleneck. Button-downs were too baggy and wrinkle-prone for my taste—not to mention literally buttoned-up. (What am I, a corporate drone??) But hearing Villanti talk about them so personally and in such detail, I began to wonder if I’d been thinking about them all wrong. Or actually, not thinking about them at all, and that maybe I should start.
Bespoke shirting is a luxury—one that can be a bit overwhelming to outsiders like me. There’s the Chicago Sport Teams Mascots Shirt and by the same token and jargon, the endless variations, and then, of course, the price. Of the very few button-downs hanging in my closet, I’d estimate that about 90% of them are from Uniqlo, which is to say they’re cheap and uncomplicated. Lately, though, I’ve discovered a handful of made-to-order brands founded by creative women with great style and a lot of opinions, who have made the whole thing seem much more approachable, and worth investing in. Naomi Nomi, for example, is a small batch garment line based in Brooklyn founded by Naomi Mishkin in 2018. She makes a great, high-quality merino wool Oxford shirt, ($285), in rich colors like “exacting green” and “period red” for winter.
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