Last month, I wrote about the excursion Frannie and I took to Hamilton Shirts in Houston. While there, I was remeasured (it had been a few years since my last purchase) and ordered four custom shirts.

Yesterday, those four shirts appeared on my doorstep, courtesy of the man in brown.

My favorite of the four is a pink and purple stripe (it looks more bright navy to my jaundiced eyes) with a contrasting white club collar. Nicolas Antongiovanni has this to say about the club collar: “The club, or rounded, collar…is the most antique looking of all collars, owing to its resemblance to the still, detachable collars that were ubiquitous in the years before the first World War.”

I read once that custom shirts offer the highest value proposition relative to their off-the-peg brethren. A good bespoke suit is somewhere in the neighborhood of three times the cost of a non-custom model. A pair of custom shoes can cost ten times as much as a pair from venerable makers like Crockett & Jones, Edward Green, Allen Edmonds and Alden. While a ready-to-wear shirt that’s Hamilton’s equal in materials and construction would cost nearly as much.