Kid's Button-Up Shirt (Tops)

Buttons running from the collar to the hem are only half the definition. Woven fabric is the other half: threads crossing at right angles with no loops and almost no give. A button-up holds a pressed line where a knit top cannot.

That lack of stretch changes how the shirt is built. Room to move has to be cut in rather than stretched into. That is why you get a yoke across the shoulders, sometimes with a pleat behind it, and an armhole set lower than on a tee. Poplin weaves smooth and crisp and shows every wrinkle. Oxford uses a basket weave with thicker yarn, which resists creasing and survives more washes but never looks as sharp. Flannel is brushed after weaving to raise a soft nap, adding warmth and, in time, pills.

Polos share the collar but stop at a three-button placket and stretch, so they suit an active day better. Tees offer no closure at all. The gap between a button-up and both of them shows when a child has to sit still and be photographed, and again when a child climbs, because the woven body pulls hard at the shoulders.

Weddings, holiday services, picture day and any layer worn open over a tee are the natural jobs. Under about age four, buttons are slow and often beyond a child's fingers, so shirts with snaps hidden behind a false placket save you a morning. Hot playgrounds are the other place to pass, since woven cotton neither stretches nor moves air the way jersey does.

Fasten the shirt and look along the placket: it should lie flat with no pull marks between the buttons. Patterned shirts are worth studying at the pocket and the placket, because a maker who matches a plaid across a seam has spent money everywhere else too. Buttons anchored with a cross of thread and a shank underneath outlast buttons sewn flat. Hang the shirt damp straight from the wash and most of the ironing disappears. Press the collar and cuffs first, then the body, so you do not re-crease finished parts.