This is our final product this summer, a Madras shirt hand-woven in the traditional manner in Chennai, and then hand sewn in Naples. It’s pure cotton, and has a striking but quite sophisticated check we first used on linen shirts five years ago.

Neither Lucas nor I had worn this quality of cotton until we received trial shirts, but it’s been something of a revelation. 

The best parallel is probably the traditional oxford cloth we developed with Canclini. The Madras is in many ways a summer equivalent of that - casual, soft and open, and something that gets better the more it’s worn. 

Much to Lucas’s delight, it’s also a shirt you can chuck in the washing machine, shake a little when it comes out and then hang dry, without any need to iron it. If you want it perfectly smooth, sure, give it a press, but for day-to-day use it’s really not needed. 

In fact the one I’m wearing here I washed the night before, dried in that manner, and then photographed. It looks pretty good to me - relaxed and comfortable.

The advantage of Madras being hand woven is the fabric has more air in it, more space. It’s this that makes it cool and soft, and is the same reason something like loopwheel sweats have a distinct feel, or hand-framed knitwear. Basically doing everything slower helps. 

This process makes the fabric a little more expensive of course, and when combined with the hand cutting and sewing at Luca Avitabile’s workshop, makes the shirts more expensive too - they’re £230 ex-VAT, the same as our Japanese selvedge denim.  

But that’s still pretty reasonable I think, certainly compared to other shirts in the market and if you read Wednesday’s article on how the material is woven in Chennai, with all the attendant difficulties of making with such a varied, human product, that also hits home.

In terms of design, I wanted to re-use the check we’d offered in the past because it was such a nice combination of colour and subtlety.

There are strong colours in this check - bright blue, yellow, pink - but they’re balanced with off-white and tobacco. There isn’t the high contrast you often get in Madras, which suits the heat and vibrancy of India perhaps but is harder to wear elsewhere. Even in parts of the US where Madras is a strong tradition, it’s still very much a look. 

I’m probably the best example of this, because I wear less colour than other team members Manish or Lucas and yet I’m perfectly comfortable in this check. It’s a very wearable Madras. 

In the main image I’m wearing the shirt with blue jeans, and that’s always going to be the easiest combination, simple and universal. The jeans can be mid-blue or dark indigo, or indeed white, as shown above. 

But the shirt is also great with chinos, in classic beige or navy, and those are particularly good options for shorts if the weather is really hot. 

Another great partner is olive, like the jungle jacket I’m wearing below, or a pair of shorts. The use of green generally is illustrated by the tweed jacket shown at the bottom of this post as well, with the original linen shirt. A grey-herringbone tweed is also nice. 

With tailoring, I’d be most likely to wear the shirt with beige tailored-cotton trousers, or grey high-twist wools. The shirt is cut to a regular length, so will be best tucked in for most people, though Lucas does wear his tucked out as well, so it also depends on personal style.

The shirt is deliberately cut to the same pattern as our other PS shirts, so you’ll be the same size in all of them. The only small difference here is we made the body a little more relaxed - 2cm more in the width - in order to reflect the laid-back style. You’ll find the measurements below are the same as the oxford shirts, but while those will shrink a little, these do not. 

The collar and sleeve are attached by hand, as with the other shirts, which curves the collar around the neck and allows for a bigger sleeve relative to the armhole, generating greater comfort. The buttons and buttonholes are also sewn by hand. 

As with the oxford and chambray cloths, we are making lengths of the Madras available to buy so you can use it with your own shirtmaker. These are 2.7m long, as the cloth is a narrow width (around 95cm). 

The cloth has a bright yellow selvedge - a signature of Original Madras Trading Company -  which you can incorporate into your shirt if you wish (eg on the back placket or the gauntlet) though we decided not to do so on the ready-made shirts. 

There are only a few lengths, but we will be getting more in a month or so. Oh, and if you do send the cloth to a shirtmaker straight from the PS Shop, please make sure put your name as a line of the address and let the maker know it’s coming. 

The cloth:

• 100% cotton Madras, hand-woven in Chennai by Original Madras Trading Company
• Open and breathable, suitable for most summers but also into autumn
• Softening with washing and wear
• Weight 150gsm
• Lengths sold as 2.7m, narrow width (95cm) with selvedge
• Slight differences in length and width a result of being hand loomed
• Occasional slubs in the cloth also a natural result of the process, not a fault
• Slight colour fading, but only after many washes. Similar to a light denim shirt
• Minimal shrinkage, 1-2%

Shirt summary:

• Hand-made in Naples, Italy by the workshop of Luca Avitabile
• Hand-attached collars and armholes, hand-sewn buttons and buttonholes
• Button-down collar designed to roll open from the neck, and around a lapel
• Length of a regular dress shirt, so largely to wear tucked in, though can be worn untucked, to an extent a style question

Care and fit:

• Machine wash and hang dry (or dry clean). Machine drying can lead to shrinkage
• Can be ironed as normal, but not necessarily needed
• Comfortable fit, 2cm wider in the waist than other PS shirts but otherwise the same
• Simon is wearing a bespoke shirt in the images. Refer to other shirt images on the shop for a sense of fit elsewhere - in those he is wearing a regular Medium

Above: images of the first version of this Madras shirt (not hand woven) back in 2020. To illustrate how the shirt looks with indigo denim, green tweed, and olive shorts. 

Clothes featured, from the top:

• Vintage seventies Levi’s 501 jeans
• Alden LHS snuff-suede loafers
• White Rubato jeans
• Vintage US Army jungle jacket 
• Hardy sunglasses from EB Meyrowitz
• Green tweed jacket from Biagio Granata
• Indigo jeans from Blackhorse Lane
• Alden full-strap loafers in Color 8 cordovan