I recently moved from the ‘Why have I got so many shirts? I can only wear one at a time‘ state to the ‘Why have I got so many shirts with fraying cuffs and collars? I must get some more‘ state.

I usually buy shirts in Jermyn Street in London and I usually buy them from Charles Tyrwhitt (bare with me – we will get to something environmental soon).

So there I was in Charles Tyrwhitt asking for what 19″ neck, 37″ arms, shirts they had and I was told they could order them. I said, I can order them, my hope was that in a shirt shop I could actually look at some shirts. Do you find this these days? The last Barbour I bought I tried to buy a few yards away from Jermyn Street on Piccadilly but they didn’t have much of a range in store. I was told they could order them and I told them I could order them, so I did.

But the advantage of doing shirt shopping in Jermyn Street (where I once, many years ago, accidently encountered the then minister Richard Benyon (I wonder where he gets his shirts?) and had a useful chat) is that there are other shirt shops available when one lets you down.

Thomas Pink or TJ Lewin? Lewin was closer and, hooray!, they had shirts of the size I wanted (well, needed actually) and they had a very good deal of five for £120 – yes, five! So I bought five shirts and that’ll be it for a few more years. By the way, there were some other people specifically looking for 19″ collars in Lewin – it seems to be the place to go for svelte types like myself.

Now, if you don’t buy reasonably smart shirts (and then you are indeed a lucky man (or woman) and don’t have access to someone who does) you might not know how much unwrapping is involved once you get your shirts home.

There is some cardboard, some tissue paper and some bits of what look like plastic to me. To be fair, I think there is a bit less of this stuff invovled in these shirts than there used to be. Has anyone else noticed that? I think someone may have been making an effort to reduce the waste involved. If so, good for them.

But there is still quite a bit of plastic. And I’ve now unwrapped five shirts.

I’d be surprised if this pile of plastic couldn’t be further reduced.

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