Nautical British-Made Men's Shirts — Voted by the Community

Britain's shirtmaking grew alongside its linen and cotton industries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as mechanised spinning and weaving made cloth cheaper and more plentiful. Ready-made shirts became a large industry in the nineteenth century, and the biggest centre was Derry, now in Northern Ireland. William Scott started a shirtmaking business there in 1831, relying on outworkers who sewed at home. Tillie and Henderson opened a large shirt factory in the city in 1856. By 1902 Derry had 38 shirt factories employing 18,000 workers, with many more outworkers, and most of the workforce were women. Poplin and Oxford cloth became staples of shirting. Poplin's name is usually traced to a fabric made in Avignon in France, while the origin of Oxford cloth is uncertain. British-made cotton poplin was sold in the United States from the early 1920s, where buyers renamed it broadcloth. Contemporary British-made shirts draw on this history of cloth and factory skill, using careful cutting and stitching to make shirts for both formal and casual wear.