MY husband collects shirts.
The office wear variety, to be exact.
The last time I checked, his shirts have usurped my wardrobe and dozens of homeless cocktail dresses are now languishing sadly in a trunk, tucked away in storage till the day I get back my pre-pregnancy size. (I can always dream, can’t I?)
And guiltily, I was responsible for creating this fashion frankenstein – albeit, a well-dressed one.
It all started with a purple shirt four years ago.
Tired of his usual white, black and grey ensemble, I picked up a Barney-purple slimfit shirt from a ready-to-wear designer label and slapped it on his reluctant back.
Amazingly, the style suited him to a tee.
It was bye bye Azam the neighbourhood tailor and hello Orchard Road shirt labels.
He couldn’t have found a better time to grow his collection. In the last few years, mid-priced specialty shirt stores – ready-made and bespoke – have mushroomed all over town.
English label Charles Tyrrwhitt opened its doors in 2006. Thomas Pink launched in 2007 and T.M. Lewin – an English brand with a century-old heritage in shirtmaking, entered the market in 2009.
Contemporary bespoke shirt label Aston Blake launched in Millennia Walk last year and our very own home-grown success Raoul rolled out three stores – Raffles City in 2007, Paragon and Ngee Ann City in 2009 – all in the space of three years, bad economy notwithstanding.
Indeed, our men are spoilt for choice when it comes to buying shirts.
They can take their pick from mass market brands in department stores or indulge in luxury labels like Giorgio Armani, Zegna and Hugo Boss.
But it’s the value-for-money approach of mid-priced, quality brands like Raoul and T.M. Lewin that seem to be winning over the male executive market.
T.M. Lewin for one retails its Jermyn Street-quality shirts in bundles throughout the year – a retail practice that you would usually associate with year-end sales and seasonal mark-downs.
A typical bundle of three shirts goes for $249 and ties are also sold in bundles of two for $99.
Mr R Dhinakaran, managing director of Jay Gee Enterprises, which distributes T.M. Lewin in Singapore, said that unlike women’s fashion, men’s fashion tend to be “fairly restricted”.
He said: “Shirts are still the single most visible part of a man’s attire. Having a wide range of designs with good quality at affordable prices allows more men to be dressed well.”
With over 50 new designs being introduced in its stores every month, that’s more styles than the number of days in a year. You will never be caught wearing the same shirt twice again.
While variety works well for a husband who is in sales, it has created a whole new set of problems for the shopaholic wife.
I now have to get a new wardrobe, or a new apartment.
