Your Choices for Spring: Men’s Fashion Shirt Designers

Mens double collar dress shirt.

Spring is here and it’s time to shed your layers and step out with new fashion wear.  How should you pick from the myriad options that the sartorial world presents?  Let’s consider some options and weigh the choices that we have for new men’s fashion dress shirts these days.  For me, the designers of the men’sfashion shirts on the market right now break into three classes: the Big Designers, the Imitators, and the Upstarts. 

First let’s consider the Big Designers.  You know who these guys are and you’ve known about them since you were 14.  They offer not just shirts and not just men’s wear.  They have a global presence, and you can buy their wares online or you can go to a high end department store in your local mall or maybe in a high rise downtown and check them out in person.  Their shirts fit great, and you know that you are getting a quality dress shirt.  However, though their runway shows certainly feature outlandish and forward thinking styles, the fashion shirts available to you may be a little on the conservative side.  Let’s be clear, anyone into fashion probably has lots of these shirts in their closet.  Sometimes you need just a white dress shirt or a blue dress shirt that you can trust, and that you know fits you right.  If you get it from the Big Designers you’ll be paying extra for the name, but you know what you’re getting.

The next category is the Imitators.  These guys don’t really do enough for me to waste much space here writing about them.  They take the classic styles and ideas of the Big Designers and they offer shirts for dramatically less financial outlay.  Sure, this seems like a good idea at first, but when you get the shirt home and it doesn’t fit quite right, and the buttons start falling off, it doesn’t look like such a good deal.  These guys are notorious for skipping over the details that make your favorite shirt special.  Clearly, I think they do not deserve your patronage.

Finally we get to my favorite category, the Upstarts.  These designers are the smallest firms, and thus the creative types have more freedom to express themselves through the design of the product.  This is where you’ll find men’s designer shirts that have real fashion innovation, that are cutting edge, shaping the sartorial landscape of men’s fashion, able to take ideas from the runway and put them into products that you can actually get your hands on.  These brands will charge you a pretty penny just like the Big Designers will, and you might not immediately recognize their name, but you get what you pay for in this world and that means these shirts are of the highest quality.  The fit is every bit as slim as the top designers (sometimes even more!) and the material is impressively smooth and soft.

For me, the choice is simple.  I go with the Upstarts.  Sure, I have stuff from the Big Designers in my closet.  I’ve tried the Imitators and I won’t go back.  Life is about going for it and taking chances, and that’s just what the Upstarts are doing with their shirts, and that’s an idea I can get behind.

French Shirts: A Hot New ‘Trend’ in Men’s Designer Dresswear

French shirt with double collar and silver buttons

If you’re like me you and you care about fashion, you want something that is unique and maybe even trendy, but you don’t want it to go out of style next week either.  When I buy a new piece to add to my wardrobe I want something that I don’t already have, and I want something that my friends don’t have either.  I want something that people will ask me about.  I want something that people haven’t seen but after they see it, they’ll remember it, and they will remember me.  Given these desires, I’m sure you suspect that I have to buy a new shirt every time you go out, but you’d be wrong.  Here’s the thing I’ve found, if you find the right thing to wear, that no one has seen, but has a classic appeal, you’ll be able to get a lot more use out of it than you might expect.

My favorite example of clothing like this is foreign designer dress shirts, and for me, especially French shirts.  French designers are unlike American designers.  The French have much more competition among designers.  The fashion culture is a bit different over there as the big designers have less influence on the style and smaller to midsize design houses are able to make a name for themselves with interesting fashion details that American designers may feel like they don’t have the freedom to attempt given the conservative nature of men’s fashion stateside.  At the same time the French know where they’ve been in fashion and are sure to keep the styles classic.  Yes, they do want to innovate and so they’ll provide you with something you certainly won’t see from any American designers, but also they provide a refined sense of style that’s never cheap or gimmicky.

One brand that typifies this aggressive nature of French shirts is Franck Michel.  They’ve been around since 1969 so you know they aren’t a flash in the pan operation.  Franck Michel have been innovating men’s designer shirt styles for years from their headquarters in the heart of Paris even though you and your friends haven’t heard of them.  They make shirts with styles you haven’t seen either.  When you see them, you’ll love them and wonder why no one else thought of them first.  The devil is in the details with these styles, with things like leather watchband French cuffs and reverse collars to go with their bold patterns and button styles.  You can only find them one place in the states, so if your friends haven’t been to menfashion.com they’ve never seen these shirts and you can have your pick of all their diverse styles with the confidence that no one else is going to have, or have ever even seen a shirt like yours. 

The ultimate french shirts for men by Franck Michel

Franck Michel fashion house in Paris

Founded in 1969, the fashion house Frank Michel is located in le Marais in the heart of Paris. Over time, the brand has proven itself to be a forerunner in the fashion shirt industry. Represented in the biggest city in France, the biggest countries in Europe and on the American continent, the spirit of Franck Michel is all about innovation and originality, bringing to the men's fashion shirts what no one had previously dared. Stitching that adorns the shirt’s contours, buttons of opposite colors, refined lining, and modern design inside the collar and cuffs have set an example for creativity. Offering exclusively the finest materials and finishes, Franck Michel is known for the strong character and personality expressed in the luxury shirts and thus the wearer. Today, the brand has a wide range of designer shirts shaped to meet the demands of all its customers. A range entitled “For Her” has been recently created to interest women in the brand. A continuing innovation…