How to enlarge a dress shirt collar size

You can feel it when the top button on your shirt collar is too tight. It’s a major pet peeve. Especially when wearing a tie, not being able to button the top button is a nuisance. When it comes to shirt measurements the collar is the one measurement you are most likely to outgrow. This is a function of the collars typically being snug with the neck leaving little leeway. With treasured shirts one is faced with the following quandary. You want to continue to wear them but they are no longer in your collar size. Shirts that are dear to your heart you don’t just throw away, nor does it make financial sense in light of the fact that many of them are designer shirts. For unique fabric patterns you are unlikely to be able to locate the same shirt off the rack today. Unlike common fabric colors like white or sky blue vibrant and seasonal fabric patterns are not never out of stock. They are made for a particular season or collection often in a limited number and once they sell out that’s it. Even going back to the same company or shirtmaker won’t enable you to repurchase the same vintage shirt years later. You only wish there were a way to make your shirt collar larger, to alter the shirt in order to add half an inch or an inch to an existing collar. This is true of shirts that used to fit, vintage shirts you bought second hand or hand me down shirts that have been in the family and you now wish to make your own but you weren’t quite the same size.

At Collarreplacement.com changing your shirt collar size is something we specialize in and there are a few methods for achieving this. The smoothest way to do this is to construct a new shirt collar in a larger size that maps to your existing shirt neckline size. Shirt collar size is measure by the distance between the button and the middle of the buttonhole. This is a circumference that spans the middle of the collar. Whereas the collar is sewn onto the body at the bottom line of the collar. Measuring the bottom line when laying the collar flat will not give you the accurate collar size. Therefore, you have the ability to vary the collar size whilst keeping the bottom-line constant within a reasonable range. There is a buffer at the edge of the collar band on either side as the buttonhole and button are not right at the edge. The entire collar band can be pushed out slightly on each side in order to make the collar larger while keeping these ratios constant. The collar leaf can also move forward accordingly to avoid messing with the tie gap. The collar band protrudes slightly acting like a built-in collar extender letting you button the top button of your shirt and look snug with a tie. We always reuse your existing shirt button when constructing the new collar to ensure it matches the existing buttons on your shirt placket.

If you want to make a shirt collar smaller the reverse can be done whereby the button and buttonhole are moved inward along the collar band. This lets you subtract half an inch from a shirt collar while preserving the same neckline. When buttoning the top button, it closes smoothly behind the tie.

This same method can be applied to shirt cuffs. Whether your shirt cuffs shrunk, you outgrew them or they are just too small. A larger cuff can be sewn onto an existing shirt sleeve gauntlet if constructed appropriately. For French cuffs this is straightforward. The cuffs extend over the edge a little bit and when you put the cuff links in, the cuff forms a wider diameter whilst being sewn to the same sleeve. For buttoned cuffs such as barrel cuff and cocktail cuff also known as the turnback cuff this is slightly less intuitive. At the bottom of the shirt sleeve there is a placket. The fact that the fabric is not continuous but separated by a placket provides room to open up the cuff by allowing the cuff to again extend over the edge and form a wider circumference while tying to the same seam. To make a long story short, the seam length is kept constant but the cuff is enlarged with the edge of the cuff no longer part of the seam. Only the side with the button is extended since it goes underneath the side with the buttonhole and thus is not visible when the cuff is buttoned. Hence your shirts cuffs can be enlarged or restored to its original size.

For collar enlargements there is another option. The collar size, button to buttonhole, is typically 4.3 to 4.5 cm less than the bottom line of the shirt i.e. where the collar forms a seam with the shirt body. That gap can be reduced to 3 to 3.2cm therefore in effect adding half an inch to the shirt collar. This pushes the button and buttonhole out closer to the edge of the collar band and the collar leaf will also come forward commensurately to avoid enlarging the tie space and collar spread. This way you can have a 16.5-inch collar on a 16-inch shirt. What needs to be avoided at all costs is simply deciding to sew the button in a different location without reconstructing the collar. Even shifting the button on a standalone basis by a quarter inch will make the collar unbalanced. It is important both the button and buttonhole be shifted to maintain that balance. In any event this method is not the preferred method since when the button and buttonhole are too close to the edge of the collar band, it feels unnatural and can be more difficult to fasten.

In additional to changing the size you can also change the style. For example, if you have pin bar collar and it’s a pain to add pin bar each time you want to put the shirt on we can replace it with a classic collar or Kent collar. If you want to jazz up an existing barrel cuff shirt, we can replace the cuffs with cocktail cuffs also known as turnback cuffs, this is the cuff style popularized by James Bond. If you have a French cuff shirt but don’t tend to wear cuff links we can replace it with a barrel cuff. For both the collar and cuffs we can support both fuse as well as a non-fuse option. Collar stays are removable and you get a brand-new pair inserted inside your new shirt collar.

We can also match the fabric weave of your new collar and cuffs to your existing shirt fabric weave. For example, if you have a dobby shirt, we can make sure the new collar is also a dobby weave. The same goes for twill, plain weave, oxford or any other major fabric category. While we default to white contrast, we can work with you to identify a fabric color or pattern that would work well with an existing shirt. When it comes to second hand, hand me down, vintage or just your own shirts replacing the collar can let you keep it a life time. What even fewer people are aware of is that you can change the collar and cuff size and style. So modestly outgrowing your shirt collar size is not a valid excuse to throw your shirt away. A dress shirt collar can be enlarged and thus you can continue to wear the shirt with a tie and be able to close the top button on the front placket.

Increase a dress shirt collar size