9 to 9 Button-Down Shirts for the Modern Man

Your workday may last from 9 to 5, but your day is far from over once the whistle blows. That’s why we like a stylish dress shirt that looks classy behind the desk, yet cool and casual near that group of women next to the bar.

But not all dress shirts were built for double duty. A 9 to 9 dress shirt needs to have crisp lines, but also a soft (no shiny) feel and casual form fit. It should come with traditional tailoring, yet also a modern sillhouette (pockets optional) and easy care fabric (heavy wrinkles are never an option)

These should be able to drop in a suitcase and come out looking as pressed as can be expected (we don’t expect perfection). But where can a man find such a multi-purpose button-down shirt? Allow us to introduce you to four we have had the pleasure to own – DU/ER, Breyburn, Batch, and the Aero by Ministry of Supply.

The DU/ER 9 to 9 Button Down

As its name suggests, this button-down is down for just about anything from 9 am to 9 pm. What happens after 9 PM you may be wondering? Well, we assume that clothing is optional depending on what you’ve been up to the last 4 hours. But let’s get back on topic.

The orange ring around the inside collar lets you know that this is basically a fitness t-shirt in dress clothing. The fabric is soft, stretchy, made of Cool Max material, loses wrinkles just by wearing it, and features strategic gussets/darts so you hardly know you’re even wearing a collared shirt at all. But how does it look once you’ve shed a few buttons and accessorized with denim?

Perfect. We rest our case:

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Breyburn

We hate to see a good guy fall down just as much as we hate to see a great startup clothing company fall by the wayside. And while these Breyburn button-downs are no longer available, we’d like to give a hat tip to them for a dress shirt that was both started and finished right. If you happened to get in on one of these earlier this year – be glad that you did because this is a beautifully executed pocketless button-down that has 9 to 9 stitched all over it.

Batch Utility Shirt

These shirts are magic considering they can look as refined as a freshly starched Sunday shirt, and then be begging for a beer and a dog once the top collar loosens up along with the wrists. This is probably one of the most laidback button-down shirts that you could get away with in a traditional office setting.

If only those strict offices really knew what was behind those mother of pearl buttons and flat felled seams, was a comfortable, flexible, and roomy utility shirt. You might see a lot more smiling businessmen on the city streets. But alas, I guess we’ll just keep this between the two of us.

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Aero Shirt by Ministry of Supply

The Aero is nothing new. In fact, we’ve been wearing these so long, that a 5-inch smartphone was actually considered a ‘big screen’ back in those days. Instead of being called the Archive performance dress shirt these are now the Aero, but they feature the same stretch-fit, wrinkle-free fabric, and laser-cut ventilation holes under the arms.

This is truly a bullet-proof shirt that we’ve made a staple when business traveling by air with only the shirt on our back and a duffel bag. This shirt will see you through an entire short weekend with very little fuss or muss, provided that you don’t spill wine on it (but there’s a shirt for that too).

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And there you have it. Four of the best 9 to 9 button-down (dress) shirts we have had the pleasure to own this year. If you have a shirt that you’d like to nominate as having the same battle-proven prowess, let us know in the comments below.