Shirt basics: All you need to know
At Acorn Fabrics, we know that finding the perfect shirting can be hard. With so many styles, fabrics, and colours to choose from, it can be difficult to decide what’s the best fit for your requirements. That’s why we’ve designed today’s bespoke shirting fabric guide. We’ve covered all the basics of shirting fabrics and detailed exactly what you need to look out for – making that hunt for the perfect shirt a whole lot easier.
Step one: Choosing the right shirting material
When choosing your bespoke shirting fabric, you’ll want to decide on the material you need first. At Acorn Fabrics, at Acorn Fabrics, we stock over a dozen different fabric weaves – so whittling down the fabric type to just one will help to narrow down your choice as the current Acorn collection consists of over 400 fabrics.
Our materials include superfine poplin, ideal for spring and summer weather, and Oxford weaves – the go-to choice for most men all year round. You’ll also find Herringbones, Linen shirt fabrics, and many more – all of which boast a range of different properties.
When choosing your shirting, always make sure the fabric is made from 100% natural fibres. At Acorn Fabrics, quality comes first – so you can always be sure you’re getting 100% cotton, wool, linen, or a blend of these natural fabrics in all of our materials. We always list each material’s composition details and weave on the product webpage.
If you need more help understanding the quality and composition of each material, why not take a look at our fabric glossary?
Step two: Picking shirt fabric with the suitable weight and structure
Within each range, you’ll also find fabrics of different weights and structure. This will affect the fineness of the yarn and how thin the shirt is – thinner shirts being better for summer or layering, and thicker shirts best suited to winter.
To work out the fineness and thinness of a yarn, you need to take a look at the fabric’s super number. We detail this in the Yarn section on each page. The fabric’s weight, also detailed on each webpage, will also give you a good idea of the weight of the shirt too.
Step three: Opt for two-ply fabric where possible
Two-ply fabrics offer better quality than single-ply materials, which are subject to issues like pilling. In two-ply fabrics, two yarns are spun into one to prevent this from happening.
At Acorn Fabrics, you’ll find details like these listed in the Technical Details section on each page. For example, our voile shirt fabrics all feature two-ply yarns as well as Egyptian cotton, for the best in quality and performance.
If you have any questions about the technical details or specification of any of our shirts, please give our team a call on 01282 698662.
Now you know the basics, why not shop for a brand new shirt fabric for summer? Our Summer Weights collection features the best of our summer-ready, lightweight fabrics. You can browse the colourful collection here.
