Seasonal Discounts

I know I've been light on posts this week. It was unintentional; I guess I've had less inspiration than usual.

I have probably said this before, but while gift-giving to family and friends is thoughtful and nice, this is a great time of year to shop for oneself. The holiday season coincides nicely with the end of the fall clothing season for retailers, and all kinds of great markdowns are happening.

Since spring I've been looking for a dress shirt in chambray fabric. It's one of those unusual items that no one really needs, but it can make an outfit more interesting. I would most likely wear it with a tweed sportcoat and a tie, but in the right situation you could wear one with a suit.

Shoe mainstay Allen Edmonds offers a small selection of clothing, and they introduced a chambray dress shirt this fall, but at $125 it was out of reach for me. Now, though, it has been marked down to $50, which is 60% off. The catch: it's a trim fit, so it's not for everyone. Banana Republic is offering a similar shirt at a regular price of $80, with 30% off discount codes readily available to bring it down to $56.

Neither of these shirts is offered in neck-and-sleeve dress shirt sizing (I haven't been able to find any such offering in chambray), so its usefulness could be something of a gamble. From the size info on the AE site I learned that the sizing was a bit unusual: the medium has a 16 neck. I wear a 16 in dress shirts, but that usually corresponds to a large, so I was concerned about how it would fit in the body, especially being a size down from my "usual."

I decided I needed to try it on. I was going to order one online, but I was out the other day and my local AE store had the shirt in stock, so I bought one there. To my surprise, the medium fits, though it's definitely close-fitting. That's how I prefer dress shirts to fit, and it's no slimmer than any of my other dress shirts. The collar also buttons and fits properly, so I can wear it with a tie, which is the point after all. Even the sleeves are the correct length. I think it's just plain luck that it fits me so well.

There are a couple of other styles of "dress shirts" available from AE right now at the same discounted price, a tattersall in blue and white or khaki and white, or a blue and white butcher stripe. By the way, all the Allen Edmonds shirts are made in USA, which is fairly unusual, and it's highly unlikely you will find other American-made shirts for $50 anytime soon. Sizes are getting limited, so they probably won't last much longer. If you live near an AE store, I'd suggest checking to see what they have in stock.