Weekly Review: Emanuel Berg Made to Measure Shirts

In this week's review I’ll be talking about my first experience with made-to-measure clothes, and more specifically, dress shirts.

Everybody is different; different personalities, different tastes, different shapes and sizes. The latter can be a real pain in the backside if you’re keen on looking sharp. My particular problem is that I have very long arms and I’m quite tall, but not broad in the shoulders and neck. Off the rack shirts either fit in terms of collar and shoulders but have short sleeves, or have long enough sleeves, but then large shoulders and collar. This is where the world of tailors, bespoke and made-to-measure comes into play. I got my first taste of this when my dad took me to his tailor for a pair of shirts as a birthday present.

My dad goes to a tailor in Brussels, La Cambre to get his shirts and suits made. For their shirts they work together with Emanuel Berg. This company, established in 1989, is specialized in shirts (for him) and blouses (for her). Emanuel Berg offers both ready-to-wear and made-to-measure shirts. The made-to-measure option lets you choose from more than 80 different collar styles, more than 30 cuff styles and more than 700 different kinds of fabric.

When I went in to get my measurements taken and choose fabrics, which was already pretty overwhelming, they didn’t ask me which type of collar I wanted. I’m kind of glad they didn’t because with more than 80 different styles the differences get to be very small. I’m very happy with the collar; it’s modern and sophisticated. I would put it in the large category of the spread collar without saying, and knowing, which of the many variants of a spread collar it is exactly. With regard to the cuff, they asked me if I wanted cuffs for cufflinks or "regular" ones, and I chose the latter. Not that I don’t like cufflinks, but I just thought since it's the first very nice dress shirt, I would get more opportunities to wear regular cuffed shirts. And by "regular" they meant the ‘Edgy sport cuff’, which is they style I would have chosen out of the 30+ available styles.

With respect to the fabrics I didn’t go for solids, something I kind off regret. If I had to do it all over, I would have gone for one solid white shirt. I still like the fabrics I chose, but since then I’ve informed myself more and more on men’s style and have come to realize that a plain white dress shirt is an essential in a man’s wardrobe. Rather than describing the fabrics I’m including some close up pictures of the two fabrics used for the shirts.

Another detail I like, and yes I know there is a lot of discussion on this, is the mother of pearl buttons on the shirt. I realize that the kind of buttons on a shirt as such say nothing about the quality of it -  but I don’t really like the button because they are mother of pearl but because of their size and shape. They’re chunky compared to buttons on other shirts I have and I rather enjoy their look and feel.

Lastly I want to talk a bit about the fit. Usually I buy slim fit shirts but my Emanuel Berg shirts aren’t however. In doing the research for this entry I saw on their website that they do have a slim fit option. If I ever get new shirts I’m definitely going to inquire about the slim fit shirts but the tailored fit (the fit of my shirts) is still very good. Especially since I only wear the shirts with a suit it isn’t that important.