My uncle Tariq called me three days before a family wedding in a very calm voice, which is how I know something has gone wrong. That morning a white Alexander Wang shirt had come through his door, and the top button flatly refused to reach the buttonhole. Tariq is slim, thin even, which made it stranger, and my aunt kept holding a tape up to his neck as if the tape might be wrong. He simply trusted the size letter and never checked the collar number. We spent that evening trying to fix a problem that a tape measure would have solved in one minute, and I have been careful about shirt sizing ever since.
Why Shirt Sizes Go Wrong More Often Than You Expect
Buying a tee is easy, since it only has to cover your chest and shoulders. A button shirt wants the neck, the https://alexanderwangg.com/ chest, the sleeves, and the length to agree with each other, and one wrong number is enough to spoil it. Tariq’s wedding shirt went wrong in exactly that way. His chest was fine and his neck was one centimeter too tight, and a tight collar ruins a whole shirt. Brands also cut the same letter differently from one style to another, so a medium from last year says very little about a medium today. The letter on the page is a starting point and never the answer.
Order An Alexander Wang Shirt Online By Measuring The Right Places
If you want to see prices while you gather your numbers, you can compare current offers on this page in another tab. I borrowed Tariq’s grey office shirt, the one he wears every week, and buttoned it up flat on his dining table while he stood nearby sighing. Collar first, from the middle of the button to the far end of the buttonhole. Then across the chest under the arms, shoulder seam to shoulder seam, the sleeve from the shoulder seam to the cuff, and last the length from the back of the collar down to the hem. Five numbers went onto the back of an envelope. Six minutes in all, with a lot of sighing from Tariq.
Matching Your Numbers To The Chart
Here is a step that people skip, because size charts look boring. Every shirt page has its own chart, and some charts list the shirt laid flat while others list body measurements, which changes the math. When I checked Tariq’s page, the chart listed garment sizes, so his collar number needed to be a little smaller than the shirt’s, since a flat collar measurement is the opening and not the neck. I matched his five numbers to the nearest row, and the row was a full size up from the one he had ordered. The chart had been right there on the page the whole time, unopened.
Read The Words Around The Chart
I used to skim past the little description under the title, and I should not have. My sister once ordered an oversized shirt in her normal size and then rolled the sleeves up three times for a whole month, which she still brings up. The description had said oversized in plain letters, and she had skipped it. Words like slim, relaxed, boxy, and cropped each pull the same chest number a different way. On relaxed cuts I drop a size when I like things neat, and I stay put when I want room. And I look for a mention of stretch, because a soft stretchy cotton forgives a bit of tightness where stiff poplin never will.
Use Photos Of The Model To Guess How It Will Fall
Many pages list the model’s height and the size they are wearing, and this is more helpful than it sounds. Tariq is about 175 centimeters, and the model was close to 188, so the sleeves would end higher on Tariq than in the photo, and I told him to expect that. I also zoomed in to see where the cuff stopped and whether the shirt tails looked long or short on the body. None of this is exact, but it removes most of the nasty surprises.
Ask The Shop When Something Is Missing
Tariq’s page did not list the sleeve length, which was the one number he cared about, so I emailed the shop with the exact name of the shirt and asked for the sleeve and collar measurements. They replied the next morning with both. I had always assumed nobody answers these emails, and I was wrong. Without that reply we would have been guessing the sleeve on a shirt meant for a wedding.
Check The Return Rules Before You Pay
Tariq’s first order was a sale item, and the page said returns were store credit only, which he had not read. That meant his tight shirt turned into a credit he did not want. For the replacement I picked a shop that offered free returns, and I told him to keep the tags on and wear it only around the house until we were sure. Some shops even allow exchanges for a different size, which is the best case, so I read that line before anything else now.
Try It On The Right Way
The replacement shirt arrived on a Thursday evening, and Tariq stood in the hallway and buttoned it all the way to the top, which is the test I trust most. There was room for a finger at the collar. He swung both arms up to see if the sleeves dragged the shirt out of his trousers, then sat down on the stairs to check the chest buttons. The shoulder seam landed on the edge of his shoulder and the cuffs stopped at the wrist bone. He looked at himself in the hallway mirror for a long time, which for Tariq is high praise.
How The Wedding Went
He wore the shirt, and nobody mentioned it, which is the correct result for a shirt that fits. The tight one went back, and he got his money back after about ten days. Since then every online order of his starts with a long message of numbers from him, no hello, no question mark, just numbers.
Final Thoughts
Tariq’s collar taught our whole family that the size letter proves nothing. My mother has made it a rule since then, so nobody in the house orders a shirt without handing her five numbers first. Honestly, it has worked, because none of us has had a shirt surprise us again. Tariq still tells the collar story at dinners, and he always ends it with the tape measure. Anyone who wants to order an Alexander Wang shirt online without sizing mistakes can start with that same tape.
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