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Why Are Some Dress Shirts Sized S/M/L and Others are Numbered?
Why do some dress shirts come in typical small/medium/large sizes while others have two numbers? What do those numbers represent? Are those going to be nicer shirts because they’re fitted in two directions?
Dress shirts measured with two numbers will be telling you the neck size and the sleeve length, both in inches. In both cases it’s usually down to the nearest half-inch, although I’ve seen them measured in quarter-inches from time to time.
In the simplest terms, these are going to be easier to get a good fit out of. The length or width in the torso might not be perfect, but you can at least make sure the sleeves are the right length and the collar is comfortable when buttoned before you leave the store. That’s not necessarily going to be true of a shirt that’s just sized as small, medium, large, etc.
There’s also the consideration that the more sizes you have to make the more expensive production is. Shirts that are made and sold very cheaply tend to use S/M/L sizing so that they only have to make four or five sizes total (once you figure in all the “extra-” sizes). It’s only worth going to the neck/sleeve measurement system if you’re expecting a higher return from your shirts.
So a lot of the time you will be getting a higher quality product (and a more expensive one) if you look for shirts with the neck/sleeve measurement. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t make neck/sleeve measured shirts out of very cheap material as a way of offsetting manufacturing costs, so shop carefully.
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