Engineered Garments Work Shirt

The Work Shirt arrived in Engineered Garments’ second season, in 2000, and it began with a specific object rather than an idea: a 1942 Reliance chambray work shirt whose two chest pockets were set at different heights. That asymmetry was not a flourish. It was drawn around what a man carried, a pencil on one side and a packet of cigarettes on the other, and the original was built to those two facts and nothing else.

What has kept the model alive for a quarter of a century is the stitching discipline underneath it. The pattern uses three different stitches doing three different jobs. Flat-felled single stitching on the hem, the placket, and the pockets, where the seam has to lie flat against the body and take a wash without rolling. Triple stitching down the sides, through the armhole, and across the back yoke, which is everywhere the garment takes load. Double-needle stitching on the collar and the cuffs, where an edge has to stay crisp. Even the one-piece yoke, which is the economical way to cut a yoke, is stitched on a curve so the stress spreads rather than gathering at a point.

None of that is visible at a distance. All of it is why a shirt built this way outlasts the person who chose it.

Why we selected it

The workwear shirt is the most copied garment in existence, and almost every copy saves its money on the seams, because the seams are the part nobody photographs. We wanted the one built the long way, in a cloth that makes it wearable in August.

Engineered Garments works from specific objects rather than from a general idea of workwear, and the Work Shirt is the founding case of the method.

Materials and construction

Fifty percent cotton, fifty percent linen, made in the USA. Two chest pockets with a button closure. Colour: Natural.

Fit notes

Cut relaxed through the body, as the pattern has always been. An even split of cotton and linen has very little give, so take the size you can move in rather than the one that looks best standing still. It will crease from the first wearing, which is the linen and not a fault, and it softens substantially across a season. Undyed natural cloth shows everything and improves for it.

Styling

With the Painter Pant in olive. Under the Trucker Jacket in the same family of cotton and linen. With the RF Trousers, sleeves turned, nothing over it.

Care

Wash cool and hang to dry, and press damp rather than hot if you press it at all. This is a two-fibre cloth, so treat it as the more delicate of the two would want. Linen improves with washing, so wash it freely. Our care guidance for mixed cloths covers the rest.

Related pieces

The Painter Pant in olive and the RF Trousers are cut from the same cotton and linen cloth, and the Trucker Jacket is the jacket in it. The C-1 Vest is the layer that goes over this shirt. Everything we carry from Engineered Garments is listed together.