TM Lewin Non-Iron Slim Fit Shirts

What do you think about these shirts? How do they compare to Charles Tyrwhitt? They are priced the same right now.

I did a search and did not find any results for their non-iron shirts.

Thanks!

Of all the ready to wear shirt companies I've tried in London, Lewin's shirts offer the best balance of fabric thickness and quality, slim-fittedness, collar spread and sturdiness I've seen apart from Turnbull and Asser which retail from £175. That's before factoring in price - you can often get Lewin shirts for £20 a go, which is astonishing value.

Their fabrics blow away the other diffusion line Jermyn street brands - Pink whose prices are extortionate, and especially Tyrwhitt whose paper-thin shirts are a joke. Brooks Brothers also make a good shirt and provide options - such as button down collars, preppy patterns, and button cuffs - that Lewin doesn't in its more formulaic, Anglocentric offerings. Nevertheless, if you want to move further afield in design (in London, at least) you have to pay for the luxury; that dress shirt formula looks good, feels good, and is excellent value.

They do make mistakes, however. Buy nothing but shirts and collar stays from them; their suits are not good - they're a shirtmaker - and their ties are undernourished in terms of taste. There is also a 'John Francombe' range of more expensive, repellently-patterned. uniformly-ugly shirts which pride themselves not only on being tasteless, but achieving the dizzy heights of the taste-free. Avoid these like the plague. You will look like a joke.

I can't speak for the non-iron fabrics, though. I've heard that across many companies they are flimsier from the start and the chemicals they are bathed in to pander to customer laziness reduce drastically the life of the fabric. They're also a skin-irritant, and might cause cancer. Avoid this - ironing can be therapeutic:

I mentioned their slim-fit being great because I, like so many buyers, am extremely lazy on that front. A slim-fitting shirt off the rack is an excuse for a company to sell less fabric for more money. Were a man to find a reliable alterations tailor who could dart his shirts in at the waist (and through the sleeve) to exactly how slim he wanted, he wouldn't need the ready-made products and their estimated slimming rates for different sizes. Alterations really are part of the ready to wear process - we're never exactly a hanger size - and tend to take a small proportion of the total cost (maybe the premium the manufacturers are taking for doing it in-house). There are often many more fabrics offered in the non-slim fitting ranges which, for a little DIY, you can wear slim, as the real workmanship, and hence sizing, in a shirt lies in the collar, the shoulder, the chest, and the armhole; the rest is just et cetera as much as you need.

If its helps out the non-iron range are entirely thick twill, with a very soft hand. I don't know the specifics of how they make them non-iron, but they seem to work.

I've not yet suffered any irritation, and after a day wearing a suit I'm normally happy enough with their condition to go straight to a bar sans-tie.

they shrink like crazy ... so consider a half size up in neck and sleeve. I typically go for a 16.5/35 in order to achieve a 16/34.5ish after a couple washes. sometimes my tailor has to lengthen the hands a touch also after a couple washes to ensure the same break on all/most of my suits/jackets.

i like TM Lewin.

Originally Posted by niidawg3

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they shrink like crazy ... so consider a half size up in neck and sleeve. I typically go for a 16.5/35 in order to achieve a 16/34.5ish after a couple washes. sometimes my tailor has to lengthen the hands a touch also after a couple washes to ensure the same break on all/most of my suits/jackets.

i like TM Lewin.

Do you hang or tumble try?

T and A start at £120, not £175. Pleased to hear Lewin has improved. Agree with the comments on Pink, the biggest rip off merchants on Jermyn st