Dress shirts for muscular and athletic men

Broad shoulders, a muscular chest, a trim waist: the V-shaped build is the one off-the-rack shirts fit worst. If the shirt fits the shoulders, it's too loose at the waist. If it fits the waist, it pulls across the chest and grips your arms. Here is how to choose a shirt that follows an athletic build, from the office to special occasions.

Why a V-shaped build is hard to fit

A muscular or athletic build has a big difference between chest and waist: broad shoulders and chest, a narrower waist, and often well-developed arms and neck. A shirt must therefore be generous up top and close to the body at the waist, without restricting movement.

The signs of a shirt that doesn't fit you:

• buttons pulling across the chest and the front gaping between them
• sleeves that grip the biceps and ride up when you raise your arms
• armholes, where the sleeve is sewn on, that cut in under the arms
• excess fabric bunching at the waist once tucked in
• a collar that's too tight because your neck has kept pace with your training

Why off-the-rack shirts don't fit

Off-the-rack shirts start from an average body and scale everything up together. Take the size that closes over your chest and you get a waist that's too wide. Pick a "slim" fit to trim the waist and you also squeeze the chest, shoulders and arms. No standard size gives you both.

Our Observatoire de la chemise, a study of 82,384 shirts, puts a number on it: 75.8% of the 22,095 customers measured fit no standard off-the-rack size. Measurement by measurement, the closest standard size has the wrong sleeve length for 40% of customers measured, the wrong neck size for 24% and the wrong waist for 24%. With a V-shaped build, these gaps add up.

How our AI and the Fit Key solve it

A LE CHEMISEUR® shirt is built from around ten independent measurements, including neck, shoulder width, chest, waist, hips, armholes, back and sleeve length, and cuffs. Each one is calculated for you, without affecting the others.

You don't need to take your measurements. Our AI, trained on data from more than 50,000 customers, calculates your fit from your weight, height and age, plus your answers to three questions. It gives room to the chest and shoulders, keeps the shirt close to the body at the waist and the sleeves the right length, with armholes that let you lift your arms.

Your fit is then stored in your Fit Key: a 5-character code printed inside the back yoke, using a system patented in 2012. Your build changing with training? Adjust the chest, shoulders or waist in one click, and your fit gets more precise with every order, without ever measuring yourself.

And it works: a 5% return rate, versus 20 to 30% in online fashion. If your first shirt isn't perfect, we correct the fit under our 100-day Fit Guarantee, usually without you sending the shirt back.

Our advice: collar, fit and fabric

The collar

A muscular neck first needs the right collar size, to the centimeter: see our page on shirts for a thick neck. As for shape, an Italian collar or a French collar with fairly long points balances broad shoulders; a small collar or a band collar (no points), sitting close to the neck, makes them look even bulkier. More pointers in our guide to choosing your shirt collar.

The fit

Our AI takes care of it: room in the chest and shoulders and a shirt close to the body at the waist, often called an athletic fit, rather than a slim fit that squeezes everywhere. Back darts, two short vertical seams, can define the waist further without compressing the chest.

The fabric

Twill or oxford is sturdy enough to shape the shoulders without clinging to every muscle. Very thin or very soft fabrics cling and show everything; keep them for summer.

The sleeves

Worn down, sleeves should end at the base of the thumb and fit over the biceps without pulling. Rolled up, they should stay put without gripping.

All our men's dress shirts are cut to your build, in easy-care European fabrics. For other body types, see our pages on shirts for men with a belly, plus-size shirts and shirts for shorter men.