Nigel Cabourn Open Collar Shirt

Fifty-two linen against forty-eight cotton is about as evenly balanced as a shirting blend gets, and balance is the whole intention. Linen alone gives a shirt texture, coolness, and a crease that arrives within the hour. Cotton alone gives a shirt softness and a flat, quiet surface that some people want and others find characterless. Half and half produces a cloth that creases less severely than linen and has more going on in it than cotton, and in ivory, which shows a weave more honestly than any other pale color, you can see the linen in it from a few feet away. Made in Japan.

Why we selected it

An open collar shirt lives or dies on the cloth, because there is nothing else to it. This one has a cloth worth looking at.

Cabourn works in linens and hemps far more than a house built on military sources would suggest, and this shirt is where that shows most plainly.

Materials and construction

Fifty-two percent linen and forty-eight percent cotton. Made in Japan. Color: Ivory. The record holds nothing else about this shirt, and we have added nothing. There is no pocket count, no collar description, and no cut on it. We would rather leave those blank than fill them.

Fit notes

Sizing runs 50 and 52 on the house’s shirt scale. A linen-cotton at this ratio will crease at the elbow and soften across a day, then come back with a press. It has more recovery than a pure linen and less than a pure cotton, which is roughly what the numbers suggest.

Styling

Under the Fireman Jacket or the French Work Jacket. With the Officer’s Pant in beige for the palest version, or the Farmer Pant in charcoal for the opposite.

Care

The linen governs this cloth even at a near-even split, so treat it as a linen shirt: cool wash, dry flat or on a line, press while damp. Our care guidance covers linen and hemp in more detail.

Related pieces

The British Officer’s Shirt is cotton woven as an oxford, and the Fishermans Shirt is cotton in a stripe. Everything we carry from Nigel Cabourn is listed together.