The Dress Shirt's Big Moment

Women may have their shoes. But men have their shirts.

Men can be a little obsessed with dress shirts, owning loads and geeking out on such details as stitching on buttons or cuffs, fabric weight, and how stiff a collar stands up when worn under a jacket or sweater without a tie. Some men say they're just being practical: More shirts mean less laundry. Others just can't help themselves.

The man's shirt is having a moment. Stores are giving shirts more prominence. Barneys New York's Madison Avenue flagship store recently freed shirts from their plastic bags and boxes to display them colorfully on its shelves. British brands such as Thomas Pink and Charles Tyrwhitt have brought brighter colors, bolder patterns and slimmer fits to the U.S. Men are more free to go far beyond white and French blues into more daring territory like gingham checks and lilac hues.

Men tend to underestimate or play down their number. Shirt makers say the magic number of shirts the average man should have in his closet hovers around 20. Their considerations include a man's need to wear a clean shirt for five business days and have another five for the next week, while the dirty ones are sent out for laundering. The average life expectancy of a shirt is about 35 to 50 washes, or roughly two years, figures the Drycleaning & Laundry Institute, a Laurel, Md., trade group.

The top 50 customers at Ledbury, an online shirt retailer, each own, on average, at least 60 shirts, says Paul Trible, who co-founded the Richmond, Va., shirt company four years ago with a friend after realizing how much they both loved shirts. One customer owns 242, he says. "He buys two of everything."

Ledbury, with its colorful and patterned shirts, caters to repeat customers with a new collection of five shirts each week, available in limited quantities for a limited time. Online, there is a day and hour countdown clock on each shirt.

The shirt is both a fun purchase and a wardrobe workhorse. In business-casual offices, the shirt is flexible enough to work with or without a sport coat. And for men who still wear suits, dress shirts are what colleagues see during the day when jackets come off. New shirts also give a suit worn more than once in a week or two a different look.

Sales of men's dress shirts rose 9% to $2.9 billion last year, according to market researcher NPD Group, even as sales of men's suits fell.

Mavis Kelsey III, a 35-year-old energy investor in Houston, has a closet devoted to dress shirts. He figures there are about 80 to 100 shirts in there. "I really don't know," he says.

He likes the variety. "I hate laundry," he says. "I have enough shirts only to have to go to the laundry service three times a year." When they come back from the laundry, he hangs each on a wooden hanger, organized by shade. "It's like walking in my closet and seeing a rainbow of color," he says.

Mr. Kelsey's shirts are custom made by Hamilton Shirts, a 131-year-old shirt maker in Houston. He orders "maybe 20 shirts" about twice a year, sometimes six of the same shirt so that he can wear the style often without wearing them out.

He prefers slightly longer point collars. He likes the band on the neck to be on the high side and the cuffs to have one button, not two. A pocket is a must.

A pocket is the No. 1 request from men on their custom shirts, says David Hamilton, co-owner of Hamilton Shirts. Its shirts, from off-the-rack to bespoke, range from about $195 to $495.

"They want it that size for their iPhone, or that depth for their glasses, or a hidden interior pocket at the bottom of the shirt to carry cash," says Mr. Hamilton. Some men want the thread color on the buttonholes to be different from the shirt. Others ask for horn buttons.

Terrence O'Connor buys so many shirts that his custom shirt maker has threatened to cut him off until he really needs new ones. The 65-year-old New York judge recalls he replied: "I said, 'HMMM, you've been talking to my wife.' " He says he owns "more than 50 but less than 100" dress shirts.

Mr. O'Connor has his shirts made by Carl Goldberg, owner of CEGO Custom Shirtmaker in New York. Mr. Goldberg says some men come to his shop twice a year and buy a lot of shirts, which cost between $175 and $275, each time. "A fellow who is buying 14 shirts, we might not see him for another year and a half," he says.

Greg Root says he's drawn to colors or patterns that pop. The 45-year-old chief executive of SuperGraphics, a Seattle design company, owns about 120 dress shirts, 60 of which are in season and reside in his main closet.

His wife, Kiki, teases him often about his collection. "It's definitely too much," she says. Occasionally, he tries to shield new purchases from her. "Sometimes he'll hide them in his car for a little while," says Mrs. Root. "They'll come out eventually."

Mr. Root sends his shirts out to a longtime family-favorite dry cleaner. Yet he is so obsessed with the way his shirts look that he will re-press them after they come back from the cleaner.

Acclaimed shows including AMC's "Mad Men" and Netflix's "House of Cards" feature male characters in pristine, crisp dress shirts without a jacket when in their offices.

Jay Brown, a 35-year-old interim budget director for the city of Richmond, Va., found shirt love watching "Casino Royale," the 2006 James Bond film starring Daniel Craig. As the secret agent was getting ready for a poker game, Mr. Brown was struck by the fit and fabric. He watched the credits to find out more. Then he went online to research and watched YouTube videos on made-to-measure shirts.

"That's when my collection of shirts really began to grow," Mr. Brown says.

He owns more than 40. Going to shops that offer made-to-measure shirts gave him more options than local department stores, and he began trying details like French cuffs, pockets, monograms and no-show buttons.

Mr. Brown tried shopping at Ledbury on a colleague's recommendation. He has purchased 15 Ledbury shirts in the past four months. "I like options," he says. In his closet the shirts are hung by color, from purple to lighter purples from dark pinks to light pinks, to blues and so on.