Everything else in a working wardrobe is built on top of a white shirt. It goes under every suit, behind every tie colour, inside every jacket. It is formal enough for the most demanding meeting you will ever sit in and clean enough for any evening where a suit is expected. And the gap between a white shirt that fits and one that does not is visible from the other side of a room, which is why it is worth having this one made rather than settling. We cut them in fine cotton poplin or twill from Thomas Mason or Alumo, to your measurements, built to survive years of hard laundering.
Why it is always white first
White is the most formally correct shirt colour there is. It reads clean, professional and precise under any suit, in daylight or under office lighting. Under charcoal it gives you contrast. Under navy it sits comfortably alongside. Under grey it lifts the whole thing. And with evening dress it is the only answer, correct or otherwise.
It also photographs better than anything else, which matters more than people expect. The office portrait, the wedding album, the profile picture, the stage at an awards night. No other colour comes out as cleanly or looks as right across the full range of situations where you are going to be looked at and remembered.
One caveat, and it matters: a white shirt has to actually be white. Not off-white, not cream, and definitely not the tired yellowish white of a shirt that has been through two years of the wrong detergent. The Thomas Mason 100/2 two-ply poplin we use gives a proper clean white and holds it wash after wash, provided you look after it. Ask us how, because half the shirts we see ruined were ruined at home.