Are Spier & Mackay Shirts High Quality? (Value Review)

For menswear fans like us here at the Gentleman’s Gazette, Spier & Mackay is among the more popular brands of shirts, and we wanted to evaluate their value, the pros and cons, and find out who should buy them and who shouldn’t.

Spier & Mackay is a Canadian brand. It is priced very affordably, yet it suggests a higher quality level, and many people often probably compare it to Suitsupply or Pini Parma.

While they now offer a wider range of casual and also more formal clothing, they all started with shirts, and because it’s still the core of their brand that’s the item we’re going to focus on today. Honestly, because we really go deep, if we made a review on all the things they offer, it would probably be two or three hours long.

So, today, we share with you what type of shirts Spier & Mackay offers, what value you get when you buy a shirt from them, what you have to pay attention to if you decide to buy a shirt from them, and the caveats you have to deal with if you buy from Spier & Mackay.

Note: This video is 100% not sponsored. Spier & Mackay did not provide us with any product. We spent more than $1,600 of our own money buying these products. Over the course of 18 months, we tested them, washed them, wore them so we can come up with our own opinions that are completely unbiased and unfiltered.

History of Spier & Mackay

Spier & Mackay was launched as an online brand on May 5, 2010 by Rikky Khanna in Canada. He had a bit of a journey to get there starting with a trip to an Asian textile market in 2004 when Rikky realized that he could get an overall less expensive shirt if he bought the fabric separately than if he would just go to his tailor and have something custom made for him.

In 2009, he spent seven months in India trying to find the right fabrics and pairing them with a larger scale manufacturer. His goal was ready-to-wear as well as “customized” shirts. Spier & Mackay offers something that is called a “custom shirt” and, in our opinion, that is not a true custom product.

As we said before in our post on “custom” menswear, there’s no clear definition that covers what “custom” really means. To understand how we use “custom” compared to “made-to-measure” and “made-to-order,” though, you may consult our guide on those terms.

Overall, they joined a whole menswear online marketplace at an early time just like Indochino did or iTailor for example.

A few years in, in 2012, Spier & Mackay added jackets, trousers, and sports coats of their lineup; all of them being produced in China in order to keep the cost low, which had become some of the hallmarks for the brand. In a previous post, we explain whether the country of origin matters and if something “Made in China,” “Made in Germany,” or “Made in the US” is truly different.

Frankly, we have no idea what kind of standard Spier & Mackay has in their factories, so we can’t speak about that. As Spier & Mackay has grown the base of the company continues to be in Mississauga, Canada, and while they used to have a flagship store, they seem to have closed that down and now fully focus on the online sales model.

What Exactly Makes A Spier & Mackay Shirt?

When talking about what makes a Spier & Mackay shirt a Spier & Mackay shirt, in my mind, there are three big things: price, range of options, and sizing variety.

1. Price

Personally, I think price is their biggest attractor, and their regular retail price points of dress shirts range from $39 to $88. Of course, that’s just for their ready-to-wear shirts. Their custom shirts are priced higher and I’ll talk about them later.

While they actually offer quite a few shirts at a $39 price point, the majority of shirts are between $45 and $55. When Spier & Mackay shirts are on sale, you can sometimes get them for $19, which is extremely inexpensive in North America. On top of that, shipping to Canada or the US is free with orders over a hundred dollars or more.

If you’re on their email list, they regularly have flash sales and typically up to 20% off. Sometimes it also applies to their sale items, so you can get even bigger deals.

So, how can they afford to sell shirts that inexpensively? Well, at a sale price, they probably don’t make much money. They simply have slow sellers that they want to get out of storage because the storage also has a cost to them. Otherwise, it’s a typical direct-to-consumer model, cutting out the middleman, therefore passing on price savings directly to you.

More specifically, they say that other brands that cost the same use fabrics that are less expensive, and brands that use fabrics that are as expensive as theirs would cost you more. Of course, they never show or mention actual brands.

So, in my mind, it’s all smoke and mirrors, as it doesn’t really tell me specifically what’s going on or who they’re benchmarking against and if what they claim is actually true.

As is the case with many companies who utilize the type of diagrams Spier & Mackay does. They also highlights how quality is a cornerstone of their brand. Interestingly, they’re quite vague when it comes to explaining what exactly it is that they mean when they say that. In a nutshell, though, Spier & Mackay offers relatively affordable shirts and other goods for men interested in classic style.

2. Range of Options

The second reason why someone would be interested in Spier & Mackay shirts, in my opinion, is the fact that they have quite a range of style options. For example, they offer regular dress shirts, denim shirts, casual shirts, sports shirts, polo shirts, Oxford cloth button-down shirts, and so forth.

More importantly, Spier & Mackay has done some homework. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s take a look at their Oxford cloth button-down shirts for example. They feature a rolled button-down collar with a nice s-curve, which is something that you don’t usually find from lower-priced shirt manufacturers.

It allows for the collar to elegantly roll along the gorge of the lapel, and it looks particularly nice when not worn with a tie, but it can also be worn with a tie. It frames the tie nicely and always gives you a casual, somewhat preppy look that is desired by some. To learn more about the type of look, you may check out our menswear review of The Talented Mr. Ripley.

The Spier & Mackay OCBD shirt also has a four-piece split yoke. There are no pleats in the back. If you take a look at the armhole seam, you can see triple stitching for just a reinforced sleeve attachment. Otherwise, you see single-needle stitching with about 19 to 20 stitches per inch or two-and-a-half centimeters and then, you have a pocket.

If there’s a pattern, typically, it’s matched on the sleeve, on the shoulder, on the yoke, and then, the pocket, which is something that you rarely see in this kind of price category. It also has a side seam gusset and so, you can tell they looked into what classic enthusiasts value and put it all into their shirt.

Made-To-Measure Shirt Options

For their made-to-measure shirts, which is that “custom program,” they offer a variety of 21 shirt collars. They also have 10 cuffs and 10 shirt-front styles. You can also choose between 4 pleat options or no pleat and no pocket or 17 different pocket styles.

They allow you to define the edge stitching on your collar. You can have it all the way at the edge. You can have it a quarter-inch in or an eighth-of-an-inch in.

Ready-To-Wear Shirts Options

On the ready-to-wear side, probably your most popular collar is the button-down collar followed by their spread or full-spread collar. All colors with collar stays have removable ones and they come default with plastic stays. Again, it’s very normal in this price range and you only find higher materials, such as metal, from more expensive brands.

Sadly, if you’re in the market for more unusual colors, such as a club collar, for example, with rounded points or a tab collar or a collar for collar bars, Spier & Mackay cannot give that to you, even though they have a custom program that, in theory, should offer you that.

Buttons

Spier & Mackay has three different ready-to-wear shirt lines. Their purple label is the highest range with Australian mother-of-pearl buttons.

The black label is their middle range, and it features shell buttons. They’re not as nice as the Australian mother-of-pearl, but they’re still shell.

Their white label has distinctly different buttons, that’s their lowest tier, it seems. And their buttons, when you burn them, look different and they burn by themselves compared to the buttons that are shell. When you smell it, it smells a bit like burnt plastic. It could be like a composite button or something. I’m not entirely sure. We’d have to get it lab tested to really figure that out.

If you take a closer look, sadly, you can see that none of the buttons in Spier & Mackay have shanks and, because of that, particularly on thicker fabric, once the shirt is buttoned or the button is buttoned, you see little wavy ripples around the button, which is a hallmark that is not enough space between the fabric and the button itself for this extra fabric layer.

As you know, the devil is in the details and Spier & Mackay seems to have an 80-20 approach, where they try to get 80% of the most important things right, while neglecting the small 20% details in order to hit the desired price point.

Polo Shirt Options

Spier & Mackay also offers polo shirts and so, we tested those as well. Polo shirts come in two different color options. One is kind of a medium spread collar, the other one is their button-down collar.

They have short sleeve options in the largest range of colors, then long-sleeve polos in a more limited range of colors and then, they also have a few dress-shirt-style shirts. They’re cut like a dress shirt with a button-down collar, but are made with a polo shirt mesh material.

All of their polo shirts feature a shirt-style collar, which is not that typical kind of elastic curled collar that is often very flimsy and curled in an unsightly manner. That being said, their interlinings on the polo colors are rather soft, which is comfortable and nice. But, I found, over the course of the day, their medium spread collar curls in a not-so-nice way, whereas the button-down collar always looks good throughout the day. So, I prefer the button-down collar on the polo shirts.

3. Size Variety

The third reason a Spier & Mackay shirt is attractive is likely the variety in sizing; at least, that was something that attracted me to them in the first place.

First off, they offer extra slim, slim, and contemporary fits. Contemporary being the widest one, extra slim the slimmest. If you take a look at their fit guide, for example, it’s a drop by two-and-a-half inches from contemporary to slim in the chest and then, a drop of one inch from slim to extra slim. These drops are consistent throughout their next size range.

There’s overall no classic cut or full cut of a shirt, and this overall slim trend is reflected also in the sleeves of their shirts even in their widest contemporary fit. Overall, it’s just a more slim-fitting shirt and, by slim, I mean even slim upper sleeves and lower sleeves.

I tried their 15-and-a-half collar and their 16. I think the 16 fits me better, but bear in mind that the actual 15-and-a-half inch collar measures 16-and-⅛ of an inch. Yes, that’s the difference of five-eighths of an inch or about one-and-a-half centimeters, which is quite a bit. 

The cool thing about Spier & Mackay is that you can choose between these three fits. Let’s say I get a contemporary and 15-and-a-half, I can choose a sleeve length of 33, 34, 35, or 36 because they know, because of the bell curve, most men that have a 15-and-a-half neck size will have one of those sleeve lengths.

While that works for most men, it doesn’t work for all. My father-in-law Tom, for example, has more of a size 16 neck, but very short arms at 32 so he wouldn’t find a shirt that fits him really well off the rack. Also, he’s not really into slim-fitting shirts, so his only option would be the custom option, which is really a made-to-measure option from Spier & Mackay.

When looking at Spier & Mackay’s shirt size guide on the website, it appears that all shirts with the same sizing, let’s say, contemporary 16-36, fit the same way. However, in our experience, that is not the case.

For example, my first order was a pair of linen shirts in 16-36; one was a contemporary fit, the other one was a slim fit. I like the way they felt, the way they were cutting the body, the room in the sleeves, and the material. So, the next time, I ordered a 16-36 in cotton and it fit a lot tighter in the body as well as the sleeves. It was really remarkable.

So, let’s say you buy something that’s on sale, that’s not returnable, and you assume, “Well, I have a shirt already in my size and I’m getting that same size that should fit the same.” When you get it, it may not fit you at all and, of course, you can’t return it anymore because it was a sale item.

As I mentioned, we spent over $1,600 on Spier & Mackay shirts and the ones that are made out of linen seem to fit more loosely than the ones that are made out of cotton. Also, shirts that are made of thicker fabrics have a tighter fit than the ones made of a thinner fabric.

For their super casual shirts or their polo shirts, they have sizes of small, medium, large, etc. And their large polo shirt fits about, I would say, like a 16-35 or 16-36 in contemporary.

Apart from that, there are also other variations. For example, a polo shirt may have quite a wide wrist versus a shirt made of the same material with a button-down front all the way has slimmer wrists. I think it’s because these items are made in different factories or maybe they have different standards.

Honestly, I don’t know. All I can tell is that getting the right size is always a bit of a gamble. So, if you’re a bit heavier than me, I think Spier & Mackay is probably not something for you because, even for me, the cotton shirts are already almost too tight and borderline. I wouldn’t want anyone in there that is bigger than me.

Shirt Fabric

On their website, under their “Why Choose Spier & Mackay” section, they claim that all their shirts are made of 100% Egyptian cotton from the world’s best mills. Again, it sounds impressive, but it’s not specific.

If you look a little deeper, on a different page, they mention that they work with mills from Thomas Mason, Albini, Tessitura Monti, and Söktaş. All of those are good, well-known, and respected brands for shirting fabric. But, if you take a closer look, they even misspelled “Söktaş.”

Even though they’re respected brands, they offer a range of different fabrics. Some with a focus on price and others with a focus on quality. Some of them are made in China or Asia. Others are made in Europe.

In the case of Spier & Mackay, they don’t tell us what range they actually use for their shirt fabrics. Unless you go with their more expensive custom options, then they’ll tell you a little bit more about what that specific fabric is.

On the ready-to-wear front, you don’t have that though. Instead, in more vague terms, they say that they now develop exclusive fabrics for Spier & Mackay that are not available elsewhere. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, but we don’t really know. Just because something is exclusive doesn’t mean it’s of higher quality.

Also, saying a shirt is made of fabric from 100% Egyptian cotton, it’s not specific. Egyptian cotton, because it’s grown in Egypt, implies that it has a longer staple length and longer staple length cotton twisted in yarns is better, which we explained in our cotton and shirting fabric guide. But, at the end of the day, Spier & Mackay doesn’t tell us anything about staple length. 

In my experience, looking at the different fabrics of the shirts that were shipped to me, I would say that they seem fine, but very basic. None of the fabrics, to me, seemed luxurious or premium in any way. Overall, I would say all their fabrics were on the thinner, flimsier side.

Don’t get me wrong! You can get a medium-weight Oxford cloth button-down or twill, but if I look at my OCBD shirt from Mercer & Sons, the Oxford cloth is a lot thicker than the cloth that is advertised as heavy from Spier & Mackay.

The same is true with the twill. I have much heavier twill shirts than the ones advertised as heavy from Spier & Mackay. So, overall, I would say Spier & Mackay offers lightweight to medium-weight fabrics.

In terms of the feel, they’re somewhat coarse, they’re not super soft even though the linen shirts I found were nice and soft and really great for a shirting material. Honestly, though, at the price point of Spier & Mackay, I think it’s a good fabric. It’s what I would expect. It’s decent, but it’s nothing special.

So, the fact that Spier & Mackay kind of touted the horn and advertised it as high quality” I was maybe a bit disappointed. But, if I take a step back and just look at the price, I think what you get for what you pay in terms of fabric is good.

Is it exceptional or very good? No. Is their quality control over the top? I don’t think so. I got a shirt with a clear weaving error and they didn’t catch that, although cotton is a natural material, weaving errors happen and that’s okay. But, again, there is nothing that shows me that Spier & Mackay does anything special in terms of fabric quality.

Their polo shirt material, on the other hand, I think, is above average. It has a nice medium to heavier weight. It’s very soft. It’s nice and flexible but, typically, all knitted mesh materials are. I’ve washed them about two dozen times. So far, they’re holding up well.

Typically, in my experience, softer fabric in cotton is often made of a shorter staple length, so it feels softer and has this kind of flannelly soft nap and, because of that, it pills faster and wears out faster. But, so far, I can’t see anything that’s wearing out faster on the Spier & Mackay polo shirts.

All I can tell is they’re softer than, maybe, polo shirts from Ralph Lauren or other brands that we’ve tested in our polo shirt guide. At the end of the day, only time will tell how long they hold up.

Shirt Construction

Another important aspect of a shirt is its construction and, overall, I would say Spier & Mackay is pretty decent.

Stitching

The stitching in shirts that I have was between 19 and 20 stitches per inch, which is two-and-a-half centimeters. The stitching overall was neat and straight. They had the reinforced gusset, patterns lined up, and matched for the most part. So, probably, above average, I would say, even though just slightly.

Collars

One thing that bugs me about the construction of Spier & Mackay shirts is their collars, more specifically, all the collars that are not buttoned-down collars. All their regular shirt colors or spread colors are fused and that’s okay and normal, most of them are.

One of the hallmarks I’ve seen over and over again from cheaper or lower-end shirts is that the tips curl over time. When you get it fresh out of the box and ironed, it looks neat. But, as you wear it, over the course of the day, the tip kind of curls inward and it just doesn’t look very advantageous.

All of my Spier & Mackay shirts without a button-down collar suffered from this exact curly issue, so that leads me to believe it’s not just an isolated incident or occurrence, it is more a widespread problem.

An issue I had with one of the collars was that the entire collar wing curled in one direction on the one side and the other on the other side, so it looks very asymmetrical and disadvantageous right from the get-go.

That being said, I found all the button-down collars to be unfused and soft, curling nicely and I didn’t have any issues with tip curling, which makes sense because they’re buttoned right there, so they’re not prone to doing that kind of stuff.

So, in our opinion, if you want to buy a Spier & MacKay shirt, stick with their button-down collars and you’ll be a lot happier.

Spier & Mackay Custom Shirts

As I briefly alluded to before, “custom” is not a protected term and it means different things to different people. In our opinion, “custom” means that an individual pattern is created for you and the sky’s the limit and you can have whatever color, shape, or feature that you want.

Spier & Mackay obviously defines “custom” differently. What they have is you can either go with a made-to-order program where you just choose your color size, your sleeve length, and your fit between slim, extra slim, and contemporary, then you can choose the fabric and all the features from a pre-selected range that they offer to you.

Alternatively, you can also measure a shirt and provide those measurements or you can measure from your body. They also allow you to add things like your posture and adjust for it or your shoulder slope, but it’s all symmetrical.

In my case, though, my right shoulder is much lower than my left, so it’s not really a custom shirt. Also, my sleeve length is different on the right and the left. Again, they can’t accommodate that. But, then again, their prices range from $59 for their made-to-measure shirt, all the way to $168.

Starting at about the $89 level, they’ll actually share with you what kind of branded fabric it is. Below that, they don’t really share with you the brand of fabric that you get with a shirt. I would say, overall, the selection of the fabric is somewhat limited, they have all the basics – twill, Oxford cloth – and, typical colors – white, light blue, pinkish, and so forth. They use special cloths in wool, maybe in linen, also in a few special colors.

If you have an established wardrobe, however, you maybe want something in a solid pale yellow or in a solid yellow altogether. You can’t find it there. Things like orange or green are much more limited. Maybe they have one or two options, that’s it.

So, overall, for their custom program, I wouldn’t say it’s the brand’s strong suit, but their ready-to-wear, on the other hand, definitely is because it has broad sizing options, a relatively wide selection of patterns and fabrics at an extremely competitive price point.

Cons of Spier & Mackay

So, what’s not to like about Spier & MacKay, you may wonder? And apart from the things I outlined before that have to do with the shirt or the collar or the sizing itself, there is a caveat. 

Poor Customer Service

Over the course of the 18 months, I’ve dealt with Spier & Mackay, I’ve really come to dislike their customer service. Why? Well, first of all, it starts with the response times. I’ve had periods where I’d wait for over a week to get a reply from them, so that leads me to believe that they have some internal system issues, where they can’t ensure that every email is replied to in a timely manner.

The second reason I don’t like their customer service is that, to me, it seems they’re not driven to actually solve your problem or accommodate your request. Every time, between every email, you have to wait for a day, so it becomes this long drawn-out process to just solve a simple issue.

I placed two different orders and once I got them, a few days later, within their return period, they had lowered their prices by $20. So, I reached out to them and said, “Hey, can I have a price adjustment?” First, they were like, “no,” and then, we agreed on store credit.

However, when they calculated the store credit, it wasn’t the actual 20%. They just couldn’t get it right. It was just a long, drawn-out ordeal and, at that point, I was like, “It’s so difficult to deal with them and they make me, as the customer, work. They are not understanding of my situation and that this is just not worth my time.”

I understand that, at the end of the day, if you buy a cheaper product, you can’t expect the world. A cheaper product typically means a worse customer service experience. If that’s something that’s okay with you, great.

I’ve decided that, personally, I will no longer buy anything from Spier & Mackay, but that’s just me. You have to decide how you value your time and what’s important to you. And, maybe, if you just have $20 for a shirt, then yes, by all means, go buy it from Spier & Mackay. You will likely not be disappointed.

Cheap Packaging

Apart from the customer service, another thing not to like about Spier &  Mackay is that their packaging is really lackluster. It’s a simple plastic bag with a tag on it. But, of course, at this price point, you can’t expect beautiful gift packaging.

Seasonal Offerings

Another negative thing about Spier & Mackay is that they have a relatively high turnover of colors and patterns. Let’s say they had a yellow polo shirt, once it’s sold out, it’s not gonna come back or, if you have a striped shirt that you liked in a bold stripe, well, next season, it’s gone.

So, they’re very seasonal and you don’t get this consistent, wide offering that you may be used to from other brands.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, I would say that Spier & Mackay shirts, in my mind, are, first and foremost, a value, price-driven shirt that provides you quite a bit of bang for your buck if (and there are two ifs) you like a slimmer fit and slimmer arms. If you don’t like that, Spier & Mackay is likely not for you.

The other “if” is if you stick with button-down collars because they’re really nice, they have that nice S-curve shape, they don’t have the little tip curls, and, overall, turn out nicely. Moreover, Spier & Mackay shirts are an even better value if you buy them on sale, especially if you buy enough that you get over the $100 free shipping threshold.

Just keep in mind that sizing of the same size between shirts may not always be consistent and that dealing with returns and customer service may be a pain in the neck.

Out of all the shirts I bought from them, I think the button-down collar shirts in linen and the popover shirt and the polo shirts are my favorite.

Outfit Rundown

Today, I’m wearing a Spier & Mackay polo shirt in a nice olive green. I think it compliments my skin tone. I’m pairing it with a pair of khakis, which are custom-made for me, not by Spier & Mackay. They’re flat front which is unusual for me because, usually, I go with pleats because of bigger thighs.

I’m pairing it with a belt from Fort Belvedere. It’s part of our exchangeable belt system. It’s the same dark brown color as my woven leather Carmina Chelsea boots. My socks are brown socks with green and white clocks that pick up the color of my polo shirt as well as my pinky ring, which is a green tourmaline in a solid gold setting that matches the gold color of my belt buckle.

What is your experience with Spier & Mackay? Whether it’s in their customer service, their sizing or their shirts, or maybe other products in the lineup, let us know in the comments!