Introduction

When that important meeting is on the schedule, you find yourself spending a fair amount of time — and what seems to be an unfair amount of money — on the essentials of your business wardrobe. You’ve found just the right suit, shoes and accessories — even the right briefcase. Now, you’re at that meeting. You’re all seated around the table. Take a look around. What do you see? Suits? Shoes?
No. You see faces and shirts.
It’s interesting that the piece of clothing that most people buy as an afterthought is the piece of clothing that other people actually see the most. Interesting, and also a bit frustrating to me, since shirts are my business.
You see, I started a business on the simple (some thought simple-minded) assumption that if I paid a lot of attention to the much-neglected shirt, eventually I’d have a number of loyal customers who share my enthusiasm for this couple of yards of cotton, handful of buttons and two collar stays.
And it’s possible you may be one of them. That’s why I’d like to tell you a little bit about shirts – their history, how we make them, how you should choose them, how you should take care of them, and about the only material we’d even consider making them out of: pure cotton. We’ll even teach you how to accessorize them with ties, cuff links, suits, etc.

So spend a few minutes reading about shirts. (After all, you’ll probably spend at least 100,000 hours wearing them.) Because once you know about what goes into a truly fine shirt, you just might want to get into one yourself.