The ORIGIN Candy Stripe

Each season the D.C.WHITE high-end line "Ultimate Collection" takes a single item and works it through: cloth, sewing, specification, and the history behind it.

It began with the ultimate navy blazer, and went on through a pea coat, a 3-piece in chino cloth, a Balmacaan coat and a gray flannel suit, staying within tailoring.

For the 10th season, a shirt takes the lead for the first time.

What would a shirt look like if it were D.C.WHITE's own?

"The ORIGIN" is the answer a jacket maker gave to that question.

The further you push an authentic shirt, the closer it drifts to some other brand's shirt.

Stepping away from that dilemma, it was drawn from zero on one criterion alone: that it work with a suit and a jacket.

What mattered most was how the V-zone reads when the tie is done up.

The ideal was a collar with a natural roll.

Points that sit cleanly inside the jacket lapel, and a collar that overlaps by a few millimetres at the front.

Those few millimetres are what give the V-zone depth.

A regular collar, and no stiff interlining.

The interlining is not fused; it is floated inside.

That is the handmade shirt method for holding a roll while keeping the collar soft.

American trad, and of a quality that holds up anywhere in the world.

That was the condition set for this shirt.

The body goes further still.

The volume is split 60% front to 40% back.

The volume at the back is taken up by gathers, and turned into shape and freedom of movement.

The join of cuff to sleeve is gathered in the same way.

The shoulder yoke is cut as narrow as it will go, so the shirt sits on the shoulder.

Not a flat silhouette, but a soft, shaped one that follows the body.

With the structure of a jacket in it, this is very likely the hardest shirt there is to fold.

The buttons are trochus shell.

Each is attached with a thread shank wrapped in thread and crossed over.

Shirts of this kind exist only in a handful of places, and only in handmade work.

The aim here was to reproduce that by machine, at a price within reach.

Sewing is by one of Japan's leading dress shirt specialists, founded in 1952, making 180,000 garments a year.

Equipment and hands that have carried production for the finest brands in the world give this pattern the precision of a production run.

The stitching is 80s fine thread, 20 stitches to 3 cm.

The seams say nothing; only the precision remains.

The cloth for this model, "The ORIGIN Candy Stripe", is supplied by SIDOGRAS of Barcelona, Spain, founded in 1953.

Spinning, weaving and finishing are all done in house, which makes them the leading shirting mill in Spain.

A candy stripe: fine lines run at even intervals across a white ground.

A pattern with play in it, recalling American trad, and exactly what this mill does best.

Stripe matching was specified in the sewing, so the lines stay true across the front overlap.

Offered in 3 colors: pink, green and blue.

The jacket is the lead, always.

A supporting player that never loses to it: the new D.C.WHITE staple shirt.

Material: 100% cotton

Made in Japan