What’s in a well made shirt – Part .02
After the seams, how the shirt has extra body put in it with linings is the next thing to check. In manufacturing this is called interlining that comes in a couple of main types with no real right or wrong as this depends mostly on the final look required.
Fuse or Float
Generally very formal shirts have a glued on interlining on the collar,cuffs and sometimes the placket called a fused interlining. You can feel this with normally the top layer of a collar being thicker than the under layer.
More casual shirts have what’s called a floating interlining in the collar and cuff ,so just enough extra body to support the areas that need it. Here can you feel the middle layer inside a collar and that its loose and not glued to either side.
Occasionally with very thick fabrics there is no need to add anything as the fabric has enough on its own.
Collar and Cuff
The problems start with how good a quality this interlining is. When you see your collars start to bubble up , it’s a low quality glue on the lining starting to break up. And these fused interlining actually make a shirt easier to make as positioning and machining a floating interlining is much harder. When you see too much puckering on a collar it can show the floating interlining has not been machined in well. Some of the best quality lining come from Germany and are normally woven. Some of the cheapest are called non woven and are close fiberboard in construction.
Before the advent of interlings the factories used the same fabric as the body of the shirt as linings, but this makes the shirt rather expensive. So these days on the best casual shirts ,you are looking for a well made floating interlining that will last for a long time after washing giving a smooth look to the collar and cuff with durability.
Yes its hard to see what you really have in shirt unless you cut it open and that is something we have done over the years to learn ourselves. You can get close though by touch so check your own shirts and see.