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Charles Tyrwhitt

London / Jermyn Street / Online

What Charles Tyrwhitt is known for

British shirtmaker founded in 1986 by Nicholas Wheeler as a student mail-order business at Bristol University; its first physical shop opened on Jermyn Street in 1997, and the flagship now sits at number 100.

Charles Tyrwhitt was founded in 1986 by Nicholas Wheeler while he was a student at the University of Bristol. Increasingly critical of how his fellow students dressed, Wheeler decided he could make a better shirt himself, and spent around £300 on five thousand mail-order leaflets and a basic Amstrad word processor to get the business started. The company's name is drawn from Wheeler's own middle names — Charles Tyrwhitt — chosen partly as a nod to a family ancestor, Sir Hercules Tyrwhitt, said to have been killed on a bridge in Northumbria in 1067. The mail-order shirt business grew steadily through the 1990s before opening its first physical shop on Jermyn Street in 1997, placing it on a street with a long-standing association with British shirtmaking. The company's flagship store now sits at 100 Jermyn Street, and its shirts are made in its own factories using European fabrics, a manufacturing claim the company has maintained as it expanded into suits, ties and other menswear.

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Best for — Value Jermyn Street shirting.

Made in their own factory using European fabrics.

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