RN: I believe that there is a vast retailing conspiracy that makes it challenging for me -- and I suspect many American men -- to buy dress shirts.
CP: So that's why I have a closet full of shirts of which maybe two fit perfectly. And I thought it was my own skinny-necked, long-armed problem.
RN: I am cursed with similar gibbon-like limbs. I wonder if our misfit status places us in the 1 percent, but not in the nether-regions-of-the-tax-bracket kind of way.
CP: My guess is about 1 percent of men's shirt sales result in a thoroughly satisfied customer. Yet, we keep buying. You have that car trunk stuffed with Brooks Brothers shirt boxes that you haven't dared bring in the house.
RN: I try to slip them in slowly, so my better half doesn't notice. And yet he always does. I'm not sure how, since the vast majority are blue, my default color. Even I can barely tell the difference. Except that most of them don't fit. This is my cry for help, Claude.
CP: So glad I have that advanced degree in counseling. One trick: If you love a shirt and it fits well except in the collar, go ahead and buy it. Then have a tailor move the topmost button in or out a skooch to get it how you want it.
RN: My problem is that many dress shirts resemble poplin pup tents, which is exactly how I look in them. What's with that, and is it fixable?
CP: Adding darts in back is inexpensive -- about $15 --per Laurine Lewis, who's been doing alterations at Sew Biz in downtown Minneapolis for 31 years. But it doesn't look great, espesh on patterned or plaid shirts. She typically tapers shirts from the side seams, and that can run you $35.
