Cream shirt goes with

[royal618]

I have a lovely cream herringbone shirt that I picked up a few weeks ago. My dilemma is pairing it up with suits and ties. It's not a colour I've really worn so I'm having difficulty.

Not fussed on the tie color suggesstions, I'll wear anything and not afraid of loud (there's a difference between tacky and loud as well!). Suits that I have... black self stripe, charcoals (grey pin, plain, nailhead), navy (lilac chalkstripe, fuchsia and white pin, deep red and selfstripe), petrol blue, PofW, mid grey (sharkskin, plain, sky blue window pane)..


Hmmm..

 

[whoopee]

Wear it like a white.

 

[royal618]

It's more yellow than white though if you know what I mean.

I've got a royal blue tie with a silver pinstrpe which I think may look nice... probably would work with navy and greys... anythinge else?

 

[designprofessor]

I've seen some brown and orange stripe ties on cream that looked quite nice. I've also seen it paired with ligh ties, a white patterned tie.

 

[Roger]

Cream is one of the most versatile of shirt colors (and probably my favorite), going with almost everything. In my opinion, it would go with all the suit colors you've mentioned. Cream is less formal than white, but is richer, and yet still relatively conservative. In my opinion, having something going on in the fabric improves a plain cream shirt, and herringbone is ideal in this respect--better than plain broadcloth or poplin for most situations. Almost any dark color tie will work, and your coordinating efforts will be with respect to the tie and suit colors. A patterned pocket square with a little cream in it would look great.

 

[Jovan]

Isn't cream mostly an English thing? Regardless, yeah, the ways I've seen it done tastefully is just treating it like white.

 

[yachtie]

I'm a fan of cream shirts and agree that they'll go with the suits you mention. I try to pick up the cream to brown range as a secondary color in the tie with the primary color being darker and coordinated with either the suit or pattern (stripe) color . e.g. for a charcoal suit I have I match a cream shirt with a cream/brown charcoal tie. Cream,to my eye, is a "warmer" color than white so if my suit is "cool" -navy, charcoal etc, I try to provide a transition in the tie colors ('cool' background with 'warm' accents)

Hope this makes sense.

 

[AlanC]

I know that the esteemed manton has stated that ecru/off-white is a much more versatile color than white in a shirt. It softens the look from the starkness of white. I wore an ecru Brooks button down yesterday.

 

[gamelan]

i don't wear suits all that much but i like to wear my cream colored shirts with medium to dark brown pants. looks really nice. for ties, you might want to check out some of the color combos at the Charles Tyhrwhitt site, ctshirts.com.

last year they had a great match of a cream shirt, light olive herringbone tie, and some copper English farthing cufflinks.

-Jeff

 

[surf animal]

Cream, off-white, whatever you want to call it goes well with just about any color. Like everyone else is saying, treat it as a white, although I tend to spend a little more time coordinating my outfit around my cream herringbone shirt. For the most part, I'll pair it with a navy suit, navy sportcoat and jeans/medium to light brown pants, brown/olive sportcoat in a houndstooth pattern, or any of my summer linen sportcoats.

 

[josepidal]

What about beige?

 

[Gilbert Young]

Just had the exact same challenge. I have always loved cream shirt and buying white, always 2 tone down.

I recently picked up a few shirts on the light blue/pink/purple, which none matched with my new suit of Navy with subtle burgundy check.

The pink/purple didn't suit work as it slightly took over the burgundy check, a more of Escort colours. Pale blue shirt was ok, but more relax and slightly off with matching bundany shoes.

There was only really a white shirt that made the business look sharp, but very serious. I wanted a more approachable feel without tie and cream fitted perfectely. Thus with your Navy (lilac chalk stripe or deep red self strip) cream could work very well without tie to allow the suit be the main piece on the patten. accompany with bold dark burgundy Oxford.

If tie, match the same clout of the stripe but more paler version (pink for red stripe, pastle purple for lilac stripe)

See if that works out.