What Is The Proper Way To Tuck In A Shirt?

When it’s time to tuck in your shirt, do it the right way. A good tuck should make the front of your body smooth and flat.

If your waist tapers below your rib cage, that should be visible. There should be no wrinkling and no “muffin-topping” where the shirt blouses out over the trouser waist and makes a ring around your midsection. You should also have a clean “gig line” a military term for the imaginary line straight down the front of your body, from the point of your chin to your crotch. A well-tucked shirt should sit so that the shirt placket (the rectangle of fabric where the front buttons are located) lines up precisely with the fly of your trousers. The belt buckle and trouser button should be centered neatly in that same line.

A clean gig line divides your body cleanly, emphasizing evenness of proportion. It also tells people that you pay attention to detail or it might be more accurate to say that a sloppy gig line tells people you don’t. Either way, you want it crisp and vertical.

Finally, keep in mind that a good shirt fit in the first place will always make tucking the shirt in easier. The less excess fabric you’re dealing with around the waist, the less your tuck has to secure. A well-fitted shirt is also sure to be long enough for an effective tuck, while a short shirt will always be in danger of escaping no matter how well you tuck it.

The Basic Trouser Tuck

This is where most men start and finish their shirt-tucking education shirttails inside the trousers but above the underpants, shoved straight down all the way around the waist. It’s the no-thought way to do it, and it’s the most common as a result.

Here’s the easiest way to do this one, and you’ve probably done it a million times unless your father taught you a different method from a young age: put your underwear on, then put your shirt on and button it up, and then finally pull your pants on, buttoning them closed over the shirttails.

Your shirt ends up pinned beneath your trousers with no effort on your part. It just got there by virtue of the order you did things. And as long as your trousers aren’t too loose, the shirt will probably stay there. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean this is a bad tuck.

If you don’t want to think too hard, this is the way to go. But be cautioned: it works well with a fitted shirt, and terribly with anything else. If your shirt doesn’t have a close, well-tailored fit, you need a little more technique to deal with the excess fabric.

The Military Tuck

This is how the armed forces are taught to tuck in their uniform shirts. It creates a pair of folded pleats, which are then pinned flat by the trouser waist for a crisp, stiff tuck.

Different services in different countries have variations on this, but the basic principle is the same: you stand straight in your shirt, and if there’s any loose fabric hanging on either side of you, you fold it into a sharp, diagonal crease, sort of like making the nose on a paper airplane. Then you tuck the creases in at the hips, belting your trousers on above them.

Below are the step-by-step instructions. Don’t be discouraged if this one takes you a few tries to get right! It really starts to shine once you’ve practiced it enough for the movements to become routine.

1. Have your pants on, but unbuttoned. You’ll need to close them up quickly over the shirt once you’re done with your folding.
2. Pinch each of the shirt’s side seams between a thumb and forefinger. Pull down to tug all the fabric taut.
3. Fold the seams backward toward your rear end, creating a pleat that folds over any loose fabric in the sides. Use enough pressure to pull the shirtfront smooth and taut across the front of your chest.
4. Button your pants up and belt them to hold the pleats flat against your body. Depending on how much excess fabric the shirt had, the folds should sit somewhere behind your hips, underneath the back of your armpits.

The military tuck can take practice getting the folds straight and flat, and it works best in stiff, smooth fabrics that can hold the crease well. Use it any time you’ve got excess fabric around the waist and sides of the shirt.

The Underwear Tuck

No, I’m not talking about tucking your dress shirt into your underwear.

Although this method is effective, it can backfire when your puppy dog boxers creep up past your waistline.

No, the underwear tuck refers to the need to properly tuck your undershirt into your underwear in order to ensure the dress shirt is between your underwear and trousers (vs. your undershirt and dress shirt sitting between your underwear and trousers).

Believe it or not this small difference has a large impact on how your shirt stays tucked in throughout the day.

Your ideal tuck, if you’re an undershirt wearer, should go in this order, from the body outward: undershirt, waistband of your underwear, regular shirt, waistband of the trousers, and finally your belt.

Oh, and if this doesn’t work well enough, you should look into purchasing a pair of underwear with grip technology that is designed to hold your dress shirt in place. My friend Mike over at RibbedTee just designed the Stuck Boxer Briefs, and makes them right here in the USA!

Shirt Stays — The Ultimate Shirt Tuck

A method with some extra help: small garters tug the bottom of the shirt taut beneath the trousers.

The phrase “shirt stays” is sometimes used to refer to collar stays (the flat tabs inside the points of some dress shirt collars), but it also refers to a specialized sort of garter. These are used by several militaries around the world, and are also popular among sharp dressers.

Basically, the stays are just a pair of small, elasticized garters with clips at the ends. You put your shirt on first and button it up, clipping one end of the garters to the tips of your shirttails (the stays come in sets of two, one for each shirttail/trouser leg). Then you put your socks on, and attach the lower clips to them, adjusting the buckles until the shirt is held straight but not taut.

Then you put your trousers on and get used to the feeling of elastic bands running vertically up your legs. It takes a few minutes to get used to, but I personally don’t notice it and rather enjoy the compliments a tidy look brings!

Recently there’s been a wave of alternative products that serve the same basic function with different mechanisms. There are high-friction belts worn under the trousers to cinch a shirt into place, underpants with clips that grip the hem of the shirt directly, and even little magnetized catches worn under the trousers to hold the shirt in place.

If you’re willing to add another item to your morning dressing routine, these can work well. Find the one you like and stick with it!

Source: businessinsider.com