Söktaş was founded in 1971 at Söke, in Aydın province on the Büyük Menderes plain of western Turkey, and it is one of the few shirting producers anywhere that starts in the field. Cotton growing, spinning, dyeing, weaving and finishing all happen inside the same operation, on and around land the founding family farms. They have been listed on the Istanbul exchange since 1995. For us Söktaş fills a specific gap: fine cotton shirting with real technical credentials at a level that lets a working man order six or eight shirts rather than two. There is also an Indian chapter to this company that is worth understanding before you choose, and we set it out below.
Founded 1971, on the Meander plain
Söke sits at the edge of the plain the Büyük Menderes river has been depositing silt across for a very long time. The Greeks called that river the Meander, which is where the English word comes from, and the valley is some of the best cotton country in Turkey. Aydın province alone accounts for roughly fourteen per cent of the national cotton crop.
Söktaş was set up there in 1971 with a mill and a cotton plantation together, which was the point rather than an accident. Most shirting weavers buy fibre. Söktaş decided to grow it, gin it, spin it, dye it, weave it and finish it in one chain, so that a decision taken about a fabric can be pushed all the way back to which cotton goes in the ground.
They listed on the Turkish stock exchange in 1995 and have exported to the serious end of the trade ever since, including into London. A lot of shirts carrying famous labels are cut from Söktaş cloth without the label ever mentioning it.
Meander 71, a Turkish cotton bred to argue with Egypt
In 2012 Söktaş did something no other mill on our shelf has attempted. Working with the Cotton Research Institute of Türkiye, they developed a hybrid cotton plant of their own, grown on their fields around Söke, with the stated aim of producing a Turkish fibre fine enough to stand against the Egyptian Giza varieties. They named it Meander 71, after the river and the founding year.
Meander 71 is a long-staple cotton. The fibre is soft to the point of feeling like silk in the hand, while keeping the durability and the wash behaviour you want from cotton. In a finished shirt it reads as a very smooth, quiet surface with a slight natural lustre, closer to the Swiss and Italian fine cottons than the price would lead you to expect.
Whether it beats Giza 45 is a debate for people with nothing better to do. What we can tell you is that it is a serious fine cotton, it launders well in Chennai water, and it costs less than the Egyptian equivalents. For a man building a shirt wardrobe rather than commissioning a single showpiece, that arithmetic is the one that counts.
The Indian half of the story, and what it means at the counter
This needs stating clearly because it confuses people. In 2019 Grasim Industries, part of the Aditya Birla Group, acquired one hundred per cent of Söktaş India Private Limited at an enterprise value of about 165 crore rupees. That business runs a manufacturing facility at Kolhapur in Maharashtra. Grasim now sells premium fabric in India under the Söktaş name, alongside Giza House and Excellence by Söktaş.
The Turkish company continues separately. It is still listed in Istanbul and still weaving at Söke.
So the practical answer is that Söktaş cloth in India can mean either the Turkish mill or the Kolhapur operation, and they are not the same thing. We think you are entitled to know which bunch you are choosing from, so we tell you. Both are good cloth. They are priced differently and they behave a little differently, and pretending otherwise would not be much of a service.
Why Söktaş earns its place here
Most men in Chennai need shirts more than they need suits. You wear one every working day, you wash it constantly, and you sweat in it. That is a harder brief than a suit and it is the brief Söktaş answers best.
Their poplins are the workhorse: clean, light, breathable, and honest value in a made shirt. Their Oxford is a heavier basket weave for the shirts you wear open-necked at the weekend, and it stands up to hard laundering. They also weave a non-iron Traveller finish, which we recommend for anyone who flies often or has no patience for an iron, and a stretch cotton with a small amount of elastane for men who want a close fit without the pull across the back.
Where Söktaş sits on our shelf is between the everyday and the special. Above what you would find on a shop rail, below the Swiss and the best Italian, and better value than either at the level it plays. If you are ordering your first set of made shirts, this is very often the right place to start.
Come in and put a Söktaş poplin next to an Albini and a Thomas Mason. Feel all three, ask what each one costs, and then decide. That comparison usually settles it faster than anything we could say about it.