Field shirt in Donegal tweed in granite

$647.00

Colours

Size XS S M L XL

The shirt fits true to size. The body is slim, and the sleeves taper to a very tight cuff. The mannequin is a 38 — the most standard 38 in the whole world — and is thus wearing size S.

	XS	S	M	L	XL
To fit chest	36	38	40	42	44
Pit-to-pit	20	21	22	23	24
Back length	30	30¼	30½	30¾	31
Sleeve from centre-back	34¼	34¾	35¼	35¾	36¼

Field shirt, made in London, with a lightweight lambswool tweed (12oz) from a mill in County Donegal — ostensibly a mix of dark brown and light brown yarn, but so much more besides — and horn buttons from the Cotswolds.

The field shirt is an unstructured shirt or structured jacket, depending on where you draw the line. It is, either way, your quintessential mid-layer. It is suitable over a shirt or t-shirt — with a capacious cut in the upper body — but is unlined and bulk-free, so can be sandwiched between your shirt and jacket.

The collar of the field shirt on a full collar stand and has the general shape of a small jacket collar. It is cut to sit happily down — where a pleasing tendency to convexity is seen — or fully up, or halfway up and halfway down. There is structure enough for all and any position, and to look good all the while.

The buttons on the field shirt are horn — middling in colour and matte in finish — and each is a little different from one to the next. They are in that regard as if alpha-keratin snowflakes — such is the beauty of being a product of a high-grade natural material, rather than, say, a plastic replica.

There are two pockets on the field shirt, both at the chest. They are built into the chest-spanning seam that stems, in point of pattern-cutting fact, from the sleeve. One is a bellows patch; the other is an in-seam pocket, the stitching for which mirrors its counterpart. Bar-tacks strengthen the entranceways of both.

There's no arm or shoulder seam on the field shirt. No raglan, no in-set, no nothing. The absence of seam in the region means that the field shirt has the softest imaginable shoulder: for better or worse, it rolls over the outline of the wearer.

The cuffs on the field shirt are more coat-like in styling than shirt. They fasten with the help of an arrow-tipped tab and button. The relatively wide sleeve is pulled into this cuff with the the force of a gusset and the grace of a pleat — although the cuff is quite wide so the shirt is easily slipped off and on.

The field shirt has a curved hem that rises steeply at the side seams. The back of the body is slightly longer than the front.

And what cloth it is; cloth which, the more closely you examine it, the better it gets. Donegal writ through. The yarn is alive with tufts of unexpected shades, from off-white to charcoal. It is lambswool, softer than one might assume, and fairs mightily well in the wet and the windy.

As worn

The gent here is as standard a 38 chest as you could ever wish to meet, and with a height of 6ft 1in and weight of about 12 stone, and the shirt he's wearing is an S.

This is the same shirt, in the same size, on the very same body.

Makers of

The field shirt is made by a coat factory in north London. Note: not a shirt factory. Rather than being made like a shirt but with heavier cloth, the field shirt is made to the same standards, and with much the same structure, as the most robust outerwear, with heavy fusing and turned seams and the like.

The cloth is woven by a sixth-generation mill in County Donegal in Ireland. Every inch of the cloth, every step of the way — from the designing to the warping to the weaving — is overseen by two people: a father and son, who continue the flecked tweed traditions of this part of Ireland.

The horn buttons are cut, shaped, and polished by the last horn button-makers in Britain. Relocated from the Midlands to the Cotswolds, they continue a tradition going back to the 18th century."It is no easy task,"claimed William Hutton in 1780,"to enumerate the infinite diversity of buttons made in Birmingham."

So they say

I received the wool field shirt as a present. Exceptional construction and aesthetic. It is robust enough for the elements but precisely contoured for formal presentability.

A response for which you dream when gift-giving. This man received the field shirt in uniform melton in late November 2019.

I like to wear my field shirt over a shirt. Perfect fit. I like the heaviness and thickness of the linen. Simply wow. Thanks.

Spoken by a gent in Japan who bought the field shirt in very heavy linen in March 2018.