Irishman rises, puts on shirt and tie. He leaves home and travels to work. On arriving at work, Irishman immediately loosens tie and pops open his collar button. Hours later, the Irishman leaves for home, immediately removing shirt and tie upon arrival and casting them aside with contempt.

The above steps will be repeated every working day until retirement.

To ponder for a few seconds: the Irishman lucky enough to be in paid office employment will spend, as a conservative estimate, 11 hours of every working day clad in his shirt and tie from leaving the house in the morning to returning later that evening. In late Autumn and Winter, these 11 hours will constitute, quite literally, all of the daylight hours which the Irishman will see, five days per week.   For each of those 11 hours, he will be clad in some ensemble which will most likely include a shirt and tie. But instead of looking upon that silk and cotton duo as a way in which one can impress the world on a given day, the Irishman will regard them as the physical embodiment of the shackles of the wage slave.

The reasons for this? Perhaps a legacy of the misery induced by having to wear a school uniform with the tie slowly squeezing the life out of the schoolboy within; perhaps a legacy of the Irishman’s clothes bought for him first by his mother, then by his significant other; perhaps a legacy of our car culture and appalling climate; perhaps because, perversely, “to make an effort” may be taken to lay suspicion on one’s sexualilty; perhaps because the Irishman simply knows no better.

Whatever the reason, one thing is clear; most Irish men, the hairy half of a proud island people with a heritage rich in all kinds of cultural pursuits, do not know our collective backsides from our elbows when it comes to matters sartorial. The female section of our island people is not immune to this, however, it is the male in which this is most clearly evident.

One thing should not be misunderstood: the Irishman is not lacking in the intent to look his best, he is simply lacking in knowledge of what is possible with regard to clothing and how best to use it to his advantage. Because that’s what it’s all about, really.

Form follows function and so it should. But the Irishman is not fully clear as to what function his clothing is there to serve. The thought process seems to develop no farther than “if a mechanic wears overalls then an office-working man must wear a suit”. Accordingly, the Irishman gets himself a suit. Job done, says he. And by the standards of that thought process shared by he and his island people, the job is, indeed, done. The shame is, it could be so much more.

“All right for those who have the cash to spend”, one might say, but the big secret is that in the long run it costs no more money to look good than to look slovenly. Knowing the difference between the two is the key, and nowhere is this more apparent than in that most basic of garments, the shirt.

The gentleman’s shirt is a timeless garment, having changed little in the past one hundred years. Its function is to help protect the wearer from the climate. Its form is straightforward: a shirt body, fastened with use of buttons in the front, with collar and cuffs, also fastened. Easy so far; we all recognise a shirt when we see one. But between those two elements of form and function there are myriad ways in which both can be maximised/perfected/utilised to the fullest.

Lesson #1 is this: if the collar doesn’t fit, the shirt doesn’t fit. There can be no debate about this point. Almost anything else in a shirt can be altered, but the collar is to the shirt as the shoulders are to a suit – they are what they are and no amount of tailoring or self-delusion will change that fact.

So, make sure the collar fits. The first thing that you should know, and they never tell you this in the shop, is that a shirt will always, always, shrink by at least 1/4 of an inch after a few washes. The result is that if the collar fits perfectly when tried on in the shop, it is likely that in just a couple of weeks it will have started to feel a bit restrictive. A simple tip: when trying on a shirt in the shop, close the top button. There should be enough space to be able to insert two fingertips between the collar and neck. This will be enough room to allow for shrinkage while still allowing the Irishman to breathe with the top button closed. Sadly, it’s not that a nation’s salespeople are trying to pull a fast one in order to sell more linen to the nation’s working males, rather it is far more likely that 99% of them are blissfully unaware to this simple, yet crucial, piece of knowledge.

In summary, get the size of the collar right and the rest will (or, more accurately, can) follow.