The classic white shirt

If you could keep one top from your whole closet, a plain white shirt would be a strong candidate. It goes with every color you own. It looks right with jeans, under a sweater, with a suit, tucked into a skirt or open over a T-shirt. It works in July and in January. It suits nearly every age and shape, and it is worn across what clothing stores divide into men’s and women’s departments.

That versatility is exactly why it is worth buying with care. The white shirt is also one of the most often replaced things in a wardrobe, bought in a hurry before an interview or a wedding, then again when the last one turned gray. Getting it right once saves a lot of those trips.

Why one shirt can anchor a wardrobe

A wardrobe works when its pieces connect. Most pieces connect to a few others. A white shirt connects to almost all of them, because white sits easily against every color and pattern. Add one and every pair of trousers you own gains an outfit.

It also moves between levels of dress without help. The same shirt is casual with sleeves rolled and smart with a jacket. That is why it turns up in so many personal uniforms: it handles more situations than almost any other single piece.

Fabric: what to look for

Most white shirts are cotton, and the weave matters more than the label’s marketing.

• Poplin is a tight plain weave: smooth, light and crisp. It is the usual choice for a formal shirt. Thin poplin can be see-through.
• Oxford cloth has a visible basket texture and is heavier. It looks more casual, hides wrinkles a little better and softens with age.
• Twill has a fine diagonal line. It is a bit heavier than poplin, drapes well and, as the menswear writer Simon Crompton notes, wrinkles less.
• Linen and cotton-linen blends are cool in heat and crease easily, which some people like.
• Very fine, high-count cottons feel silky but tend to crease faster and wear out sooner.

Three tests take a minute in the shop. Put your hand inside the shirt and look at it in good light: if you can see your skin clearly, you will see what is under it when you wear it. Squeeze a corner of the fabric in your fist for five seconds and let go: deep creases now are deep creases at lunch. And read the care label. In the US the Federal Trade Commission’s care labeling rule requires clothing to carry instructions for regular care, so the label tells you, before you pay, whether this is a shirt you can wash at home.

Cut and fit: how to judge it in the fitting room

Bring or wear what you will usually wear with it. Then check five things:

1. Shoulders. The seam should sit at the edge of your shoulder bone, not down your arm or up toward your neck.
2. Reach. Stretch both arms forward and up, as if reaching a high shelf. The cuffs should not slide far up your forearms, and the hem should not pull loose if it is tucked in.
3. Buttons. Stand and sit. If the fabric pulls into lines or gaps between the buttons across your chest, the shirt is too tight there.
4. Collar. Buttoned at the neck, it should let one finger slip in comfortably. Unbuttoned, it should sit flat rather than collapse.
5. Length. If you will tuck it in, it should stay tucked when you sit. If you will wear it out, it should end around mid-hip.

Then look closely at the making. Stitching should be small and even, buttonholes neat with no loose threads, and buttons firmly attached. A shirt that fits in the shoulders can be altered almost everywhere else. One that does not fit in the shoulders cannot be fixed.

Care, and what it does to cost per wear

A white shirt’s life is mostly decided at home. Wash it soon after wearing, because sweat and deodorant left to sit cause most of the yellowing at collars and underarms. Pretreat the collar and cuffs. Follow the label on temperature and bleach. Dry it on a hanger, and iron it while slightly damp.

Care is worth the trouble because life span drives cost per wear. Say a $70 shirt is worn once a week for three years: about 150 wears, plus perhaps $25 of washing and ironing, comes to roughly 63 cents a wear. A $25 shirt that turns thin and gray after 20 wears costs $1.25 a wear before washing. Longer life also matters beyond your wallet. WRAP estimated in 2012 that keeping clothes in active use for just three extra months would cut their carbon, water and waste footprints by 5 to 10 percent each.

How many you need

It depends on how often you wear one.

• Occasionally, for interviews, dinners and weddings: one good shirt.
• Once or twice a week: two, so one is always clean.
• As your work shirt most days: four or five, enough to get through a week and a laundry day.

Buy the second one only after you have worn the first for a month and know you like it. Then buy the same shirt again.

The upgrade trap

Here is how a good white shirt goes wrong. You buy a beautiful new one. At home, next to it, your older shirts suddenly look dingy. Then the trousers you wear it with look cheap, and the sweater over it looks pilled. Within a month you are shopping for things to live up to the shirt.

That is the Diderot effect, the pattern of one new thing making its neighbors look wrong, at the scale of one hanger. Three rules keep it in check:

• Buy the better shirt as a replacement, not an addition. When a shirt wears out, replace it with the best one you can afford. Do not buy a better one while the old ones still work.
• Match the rest, not the best. The new shirt should be at the level of the clothes you wear it with.
• One in, one out. When the new shirt arrives, the most worn old one leaves. Our one in, one out playbook explains why that order matters.

Before you shop, write down the fabric, collar style, size and fit of the white shirt you already wear most. Most of the time, the shirt you are looking for is the one you already own, made new.