Best Oxford Shirt for Summer: Buck Mason California One-Pocket Oxford Shirt
The Oxford shirt has long been associated with East Coast style sensibilities, but there’s a long lineage of prepsters in California, too. No brand knows that better than Buck Mason, which designed its aptly-named California Oxford as a lighter, more breathable version of the silhouette that still abides by the same overarching principles: dressy and casual, pulled-together and perfectly undone. Mix a garment wash with mother-of-pearl buttons and you get exactly that.
The lighter fabric is infused with a blend of tencel which not only gives it a silkier feel, but a more liquid drape as well. What results is a shirt that feels a little less like an Ivy-leaguer huffing it to class and more like a junior at Cal State Long Beach riding his long board to the beach post-lecture.
Best Oxford Shirt for Fashion Guys: Thom Browne Cotton Button-Down Shirt
Plain Oxford shirt too simple for your liking? Thom Browne’s take isn’t overtly avant-garde, but it does boast a striped grosgrain placket that shows itself when you undo the top or bottom buttons, a stitched-on tag near the right hip, and a similarly striped locker loop beneath the collar. Each one is made in Italy from a soft, durable cotton fabric with noticeable cuffs and a sharply curved hem, making this iteration a better fit with sleek dress pants or even your most refined athleisure. (Talking to you, sneakers-with-suit crowd.)
His idiosyncratic and unyielding approach to the office uniform has made his Oxford shirt an iconic piece and a staple in the Thom Browne universe. This shirt won’t win you any browny points with the tailoring nerds, it will earn you cred with the fashion elite.
More Oxford Shirts We Love
What to Look for in a Great Oxford Shirt
The quality of an Oxford shirt comes down to the fabric, construction, fit, and collar. They’re a distinct kind of button-up that warrants its own buying guide separate from dress shirts. Why? There’s so much history behind the style and the fabric.
Fabric
Oxford cloth is beefier than a typical dress shirt fabric with more texture and thus has a more casual quality befitting of rumpled chinos and sneakers, territory most dress shirt fabrics would feel absolutely out of place. Seph Skerritt, CEO of Proper Cloth, says “You can think of it as a tougher, more durable and more casual cousin to the pinpoint dress shirt.” The cotton yarns are thicker than broadcloth, twill, and poplin, so the hand is noticeably less fine. The heftier material means a high-quality Oxford cloth is more durable and can even last as long as a decade.
Construction
Construction-wise, you should typically look for the same sort of details as you would with other dress shirts. Clean stitches, felled seams, buttons properly sewn with shanks, and reinforced at the side seams. High-quality Oxford shirts will also feature a split yoke which is the panel that spans the shoulders and is cut on the bias to give the area natural stretch for ease of motion.
Fit
Fit is subjective, of course, but you want to make sure that the shoulder seams line up with your natural shoulders, if not a little below for a relaxed fit. The chest shouldn’t pull, but shouldn’t feel like a potato sack. As for the body, this is more or less subjective and delves into the kind of silhouette you’re after, but if the fabric is pulling around the buttons, your shirt is too tight. And, depending on whether you like to tuck, should be long enough.
Collar
Oxford cloth shirts can come in any variety of collars, but the most common are button-down, spread, and point collars. Big menswear nerds will obsess over finding the perfect collar roll, a detail found in the golden age of Ivy style by the likes of Brooks Brothers and J.Press.
How We Assessed the Market
Oxford shirts are near and dear to our hearts. They’re classic, versatile, and durable—true staples that every guy should have. So we had opinions on what we wanted out of them. It all starts with the star of the show—the titular fabric. The Oxford cloth has to be meatier than the average dress shirt and with some noticeable texture. They should ideally be able to rumple more than crease and wrinkle.