The Shirt De Luxe
In the wardrobe of the Great Gatsby there were many shirts. “Piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high… shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel… shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue.”
Gatsby was obviously an addict, and while one may have a few reservations about his weakness for coral and faint orange and scrolls—particularly the scrolls—there is no denying that a wardrobe stacked with shirts is a comforting sight. A man can never have too many. I certainly can’t. And so it was with a light step and a trembling wallet that I went to pay a call on Charvet, the most famous shirt-maker in Paris, to discover for myself how it has managed to survive wars, recessions, and the vagaries of fashion for 151 years.
Don’t expect to find a mere shop. The house of Charvet, at 28 Place Vendôme, occupies several floors of some of the most distinguished real estate in Paris. The ceilings are lofty, and no effort has been made to cram the space with merchandise. There is plenty of room to twirl your silver-topped cane as you stroll through the displays of shirts and ties that are scattered like islands around the ground floor.
A man in the corner gave a final tweak to an arrangement of ties and came over to see if he could be of help. I noticed his shirt. He noticed mine. (It’s a funny thing about makers of bespoke clothing. They can’t help making a quick assessment of what you’re wearing. It’s instinctive. I hoped my tie was straight.) He smiled, and inclined his head when I said I wanted some shirts. He escorted me to a tiny elevator, and we went up together. He introduced himself as Joseph and made a note of my name on a pad.
We stepped out of the elevator and into a collection of shirts that would have made young Gatsby giddy with indecision. Joseph gestured at them with a sweep of his arm. What did I have in mind? These were ready-made shirts—of impeccable quality, naturellement. Or perhaps… he paused, and right on cue I said I would prefer something made to measure.
Ah. In that case, said Joseph, I could choose between two possibilities. The first was full measure, when the entire shirt is constructed to your personal pattern. But there is a drawback: You need to return in ten days for an essayage, or fitting, and this is not always convenient for Charvet’s clients. Much as I loved the idea of killing time in Paris for ten days, I had to leave the following morning. Joseph was unperturbed. There was no problem. I could have, instead, the second possibility, which, as he explained it to me, seemed the ideal solution for anyone who wants the advantages of bespoke shirts minus the ten-day delay. This system is called half-measure, and it works like this.
You try on a number of shirts until you find a body size that fits—across the shoulders, through the chest and waist, and with the correct length. The body of your shirts will be cut to that existing pattern. The rest will be made to measure, exactly to your requirements, and the shirts will be sent to you in three weeks. An inspired compromise.
I was shown into a changing room and given half a dozen shirts to try on. When we had arrived at a body size that felt comfortable and satisfied the experienced eye of Joseph, he telephoned for the tailleur, or head cutter—a dapper, exquisitely shirted gentleman with a tape measure draped around his neck.
The tape was transferred to my neck. Then he measured the distances between shoulders and elbows, and elbows and wrists, and finally the circumferences of the wrists themselves, allowing a little extra for the left cuff so that it would accommodate my watch. Joseph noted all the measurements on his pad.
Another escorted trip by elevator down to the fabric room, and here Gatsby would have expired from pleasure. There were silks and linens and poplins and Oxford cloths in plain shades, in tiny checks, in plaids, and in every possible kind of stripe, from the barely visible to the barely bearable—bolts and bolts of fabrics, piled to head height and taking up an area as big as a millionaire’s billiard room. I have never seen so much raw shirting in my life, and I asked the tailleur how many different fabrics there were. Thousands, he said. Nobody has ever counted. It would take a week.
It could have taken me almost as long to make a choice if I hadn’t decided beforehand on a short list of colours and materials that restricted the possibilities to dozens rather than thousands. Even so, I was encouraged to spend a certain amount of time walking from one opulent pile to the next. Some shirt-makers will sit you down and bring you books of swatches, which I have never thought of as the best way to choose a shirt. A scrap of fabric four inches square is not enough to judge how the finished article will look. But with the bolts at Charvet—and a little patient assistance from Joseph—you can see how a fabric hangs and how you like the colour when you see an expanse the size of a shirtfront.
After an hour or so, I decided on some Sea Island cotton, which has the handle of silk without any of the laundering problems. Joseph approved, and took my bolts and me into a small, separate room where we could ruminate on the selection of collars and cuffs. Displayed on the wall like disembodied necks and wrists were tab collars, spread collars, collars with long or short points, with or without stiffening, barrel cuffs, French cuffs, fold-back button cuffs—once again, a variety of choices that could lead you very easily into an extended trance of pleasant dithering.
We chose, but Joseph was not quite finished with me. Would I like gauntlet buttons on the sleeves above the cuffs? These keep the opening between wrist and arm from gaping, and give a neat, flat finish. I said yes to the buttons.
And how did I feel about monograms? I said that I disliked them intensely, above all when they were displayed on a cuff, or when they were whimsically embroidered in those Japanese hieroglyphics that translate into “keep your hand off my left breast.” Joseph nodded. He had once raised the question of monograms with an American client, and the answer was a growl: “I know who I am.” No monograms.
We had one small piece of unfinished business to attend to, and that was what the French sometimes describe with pitiless accuracy as ‘la douloureuse’—the painful moment of settling up. Naturally, this required another escorted trip in the elevator. While we were waiting, I noticed a framed certificate on the wall. It was dated 1869, and it came from the Prince of Wales, who was graciously pleased to confirm that Monsieur Charvet was his official shirt-maker in Paris. (The prince evidently had a shirt-maker in each of the cities he visited regularly, perhaps to compensate for the slowness of nineteenth-century laundries.)
The payment of bills at Charvet is dealt with by a gentleman seated at a desk while a young lady at a table behind him folds shirts and scarves and ties into billows of tissue paper before laying them to rest in Charvet boxes. You can pay in cash, or with a cheque drawn on a French bank, or by credit card, but however you pay, you will need to exercise self-control to avoid a sharp intake of breath.
I have my bill in front of me. Gasp now so that you can preserve your sangfroid later. Each shirt cost 1,900 francs, or approximately £200. Admittedly, the Sea Island cotton that I chose is more expensive than poplin, and a ready-made shirt is a trifling £100. But it would be a shame to go to Charvet and not get the treatment—the leisurely tour of the fabric room, the pondering over collars and cuffs, the cosy elevator rides and the undivided attention of Joseph for most of the afternoon. That, for me, is a large and enjoyable part of buying made-to-measure clothes.
And I never have to go shopping again; not for shirts, anyway. I have Charvet’s telephone number. Charvet has my pattern and measurements. If I want, I can sit here in Provence and spend thousands of dollars in the course of one short and reckless phone call, and three weeks later the mailman will stagger up the drive with an armful of Charvet boxes. On the other hand, going up to Paris is no hardship, and that fabric room deserves a second investigation.
Joseph wished me a pleasant evening and showed me out. The sun was going down behind the Place Vendôme, and I realised that Charvet possesses a unique advantage over other shirt-makers, one that has nothing to do with shirts. It is two minutes from the Hemingway bar at the Ritz.