As you may remember, I recently ordered my first made-to-measure shirt and I was very impressed with the speed of delivery by MTM Shirt. Considering it was made to order in Russia and delivered to New York, 12 days is quite impressive.

As I described in my last post on shirts, my ‘fuller’ neck means that I complain about ballooning chests and simian length arms when I buy off the peg. So, how does the blue made-to-measure shirt compare?

Well, the arms were the biggest success. The sleeves are much more fitted around my forearms and are even better on the upper arms. The length of the sleeve is a vast improvement on the pink shirt pictured (a shirt typical of my off the peg experience), but may still be a little long.

My only complaint with the sleeve is very slight, but it is rather annoying. The button holes on the cuffs are tiny. They are far too tight for any of my cufflinks, which resulted in a five minute struggle to fasten them. The embroidered initials are rather large too, but they were always going to be a little ostentatious.

The shoulders are perfect. There is little else to say on the matter and the chest is almost there too. I may be tempted for another centimetre or two if I order again, but that may be because I am used to having oceans of material in that area. (This is akin to a common complaint when people first get bespoke shoes and have worn the wrong size for years. You get comfortable, even if it is wrong.)

My major complaint is the hip measurement. As the photo of the blue shirt shows, the bottom button is rather snug.

All in all, I am pretty pleased with the result. I never expected the process to be perfect and I have learned a few areas of improvement in my measuring for when I order in the future. A couple of centimetres here and there and the results will be worth the extra money.

That said, I was a little disappointed with the material. It is a little rougher than I like for a shirt. Yes, that may make me a tender little flower, but it emphasises the fact that it is hard to determine texture from a photo on a website.

Finally, apologies for my gurning face in the photos. I may have had a few drinks before the photos…

Due to popular demand (well, three people) here are some more facts about how the Turnbull & Asser shirts are made up in Gloucester. I know how much you love those little details.

- As with a suit, the sleevehead of the shirt is slightly bigger than the armhole it has to go into. The excess has to be worked in by hand, pausing the sewing machine every couple of inches to rouche in a little bit. With a Turnbull & Asser shirt that excess is ¾ of an inch. That’s what all ready-to-wear shirts will have and bespoke has as standard. But it can be greater if a customer desires or the shirtmaker instructs – sometimes because the gentleman wears jackets with a higher armhole.

- The firm has patterns recorded for just over 15,000 clients. None are identical.

- To show where the buttons have to be sewn on, the placket is laid out horizontally and each point marked with a pin. They used to use pencil but the mark would occasionally remain. A pinhole can simply be rubbed away. With a bespoke shirt you can pick any number of buttons in any arrangement – nothing is automated. In particular, some men prefer their second button to be a touch lower – a compromise between leaving one and two buttons undone on a normal shirt.

- There are three sizes of button: main placket, collar fastener and button-down collar. The hole for the collar fastener is the same as for the other buttons on the placket; but the button is a touch smaller to make it easier to do up.

- ‘Bong’ refers to the button on the gauntlet.

- When the collar is completed, it is folded in half and then half again. When unfolded, there are three small fold marks that can be compared to the position of the back and shoulder seams on the body of the shirt. Making sure these points match up ensures that the collar is dead centre, so doesn’t twist or stand up more on one side than the other.

- There’s a wall of honour outside the main hall for all employees with more than 15 years’ service. My guide for the sewing, supervisor Kath Cope, has been at Turnbull & Asser for more than 40 years.

- The shell buttons that T&A uses (imported from Italy) are ground down five times to get the surface exactly right. And each hole has to be punched individually, because if all four were punched at once the button would shatter.

I hope that sated your appetite.

There are so many facts, figures and geeky points about the construction of Turnbull & Asser shirts that I could be writing about them for days. And you’d be reading for hours. I’ll try to keep the description of my visit brief and chronological.

When a new customer’s measurements arrive at the Gloucester factory they are entered into CAD (computer-aided design) system. David Gale’s team at Bury Street in London sends in old-fashioned paper patterns. New York sends measurements by email. There isn’t much advantage to either, but those from America certainly get to Gloucester quicker (particularly given Britain’s striking postal service).

The paper pattern is pressed to a large plastic work table, which has copper wires running beneath the surface. A member of the CAD team then runs a “very expensive mouse” over the surface, clicking on every turn or corner in the edge of the pattern, completing the circuit each time and so sending a picture to the printer. This prints off a paper pattern that can be taken to cutters on the factory floor below.

Turnbull & Asser customers used to have their shirts cut from the same cardboard pattern each time. This was fine for the first two or three orders. But by the fourth and fifth time, with the cardboard taking a little nick here and a little slice there, it got ragged. This way the cutters get a fresh pattern each time.

On to the cutting. This is mostly done with a small hand saw. The paper is slightly glued on one side, so it can be laid on the cloth and ironed on. This again is more reliable than cardboard, and the cutter can run the saw around the edge in big, long sweeps. The edges are then often finished off by hand with a pair of shears – particularly on an edge where pencil marks have been used.

[Why would there be pencil marks, I here you ask? Because one of my sleeves was half an inch shorter than the other – otherwise they were identical. So it was simpler to cut one sleeve pattern and measure off the half inch and mark it on the cloth by pencil. End of digression.]

A big band knife is used for some parts of the cutting, usually for those where there is more than one identical piece of cotton to be cut. So my cuffs and sleeve gauntlets, for example, were cut on the band knife.

[Quick additional fact: there are two band knives, one for bespoke and one for ready-to-wear. You pull the cloth through the first and push through the second. That’s because it’s easier to cut bulk when you push – and up to 50 layers of cloth are cut at a time for the ready-to-wear in the band knife. Last digression, I promise.]

Next, the sewing. This is all done by hand-worked sewing machine. Some parts, such as the buttonholes, used to be sewn by hand. But T&A says the machine produces a stronger seam – and it’s still a far cry from mass production machinery. Having trained women (they nearly all are, women that is) working a sewing machine means clean lines and the ability to slow down and do difficult points with the pedal. The rounded end of the tie gap, for example.

The care and attention involved in sewing the shirt is encapsulated by the side seam. Here both front and back are folded over and the concave pushed against the convex, creating a clean French seam. That seam is then folded down and sewn onto the cloth itself. So there are four layers of cotton and three lines of sewing, all within 3/16 of an inch. It’s no wonder the women will swear by its durability.

The French seam around each part of the body does mean that there is no single seam running between the front and the tail of the shirt. So to reinforce this point, Turnbull & Asser adds a signature white octagon of cotton to create a gusset. All ready-to-wear shirts have white gussets; bespoke shirts have self-gussets.

Finally, the buttons. While again sewn by machine, these benefit from a nifty reinforcement technique. Elasticated cotton is wound around the stalk and then fused to the thread with heat. This stands the button away from the placket and binds it together, adding greater durability.

[One last, definitely final digression: a strip of cotton canvas is fused to the back of the placket, meaning it stays crisp. The collar and collar band, on the other hand, have a floating strip of the same canvas inside.]

That’s it. A quick press, paper wrapping and the shirt is bagged up and ready to go. All Turnbull & Asser shirts go through this process, whether bespoke or ready-to-wear. That makes the construction of off-the-rack shirts a country mile better than most others. Gloucester produces around 500 of each type of shirt a month at the moment – how many factories could claim that ratio?

It should be emphasised though that Turnbull & Asser’s bespoke shirts are truly bespoke. You can change anything. One regular client has his right sleeve a little looser because he does a lot of hand-shaking. Another has different numbers of buttons on his pyjamas depending on whether they are going to his English house or the holiday home. I changed my buttons from white to black halfway round the factory. Nobody batted an eyelid.

Thank you very much to Bette, Kath and all the others in Gloucester for taking the time to walk me through this. And for putting up with my questions.

Photography: Andy Barnham

I liked the trial shirt from the moment I saw it. All neatly pressed and arranged, the cardboard collar finishing in a tab at the front that declared ‘By Royal Appointment’. A nice touch, as was the label (black, discreet, reading ‘Turnbull & Asser Bespoke’) and the bag (also black, with the same bespoke message, but a little less discreet).

This was the trial version of my first bespoke shirt (as previously described on this site, here). The idea is that you wear it three times and wash it as you would your normal shirts, so you can try the fit and so the guys at Turnbull & Asser can see how much you are likely to shrink your shirts over time. You then have a fitting with the worn and laundered shirt, before the final measurements are sent to factory.

When I tried the shirt on, I was pleased with the cloth – a Sea Island-quality cotton in white. The tail was impressively long (no scrimping there). And I liked the higher collar that had been suggested because of my relatively long neck. While not being as large as some fashion-led shirts of the past few years, the extra height was still noticeable and flattering. It also fastened with just the one button – having two or more is unnecessary, even for very high collars.

However, I was rather concerned with how big the shirt felt everywhere else. I could get four fingers under the collar (it should be more like two); the gap between the sides of the collar seemed rather large; the sleeves seemed to be slipping far below the base of my thumb; and the waist and hips felt rather bulky. It also felt like there should be one more button at the bottom of the placket – when the shirt rode up it seemed to gape and expose my mid-riff.

Little changed after three washes (one of them at 60 degrees, to be on the safe side). But then I don’t tumble dry my shirts, which is a big culprit in the shrinking of shirts.

When I went back for my fitting, master shirtmaker David Gale was very reassuring. He repeated his previous message that it is always worth making a shirt big as it can’t be enlarged, only cut down. So we took 3/8 of an inch out of the collar and made the cuffs each ¼ of an inch smaller. We also reduced the gap between the ends of the collar, the presumption being that one would wear a bigger tie knot with a spread collar like this. I don’t.

Finally, we cut down the chest, waist and hips – originally the excess here had been 5, 4 and 4 (inches); that was reduced to 3.5, 1 and 3. I’m sure this will fit well, but I did wonder why the trial shirt itself was not closer to the mark. I also asked for one extra button to be added to the bottom of the placket.

The shirt and the new, adjusted pattern will now be sent to the factory. The next instalment in this series will be a visit to the factory to watch my shirt being made.