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Fiber content gets all the attention on a listing, and it answers less than people assume. Two shirts can both say one hundred percent cotton and behave nothing alike in heat, because comfort is governed not only by what the yarn is made of but by how that yarn has been put together. Weave, texture, and yarn construction are where the real difference sits, and all three are readable once you know what you are looking at.

When a shirt does not fit, most people conclude they ordered the wrong letter and order the next one up. Sometimes that is the answer. More often the letter was fine and the problem sits in one specific place, and sizing up pushes that place further in the wrong direction while making everything else too big. It helps to know which parts of a shirt a size change can rescue and which it cannot.

Warm-weather dressing gets complicated for one reason: there are fewer layers to hide behind. In cold months a jacket resolves most outfits. In heat, whatever you put on is the whole outfit, and it has to work on its own. The way around this is not more clothes. It is a smaller set of pieces that combine in more directions.

Most advice about looking after clothes assumes the enemy is dirt. For warm-weather clothing it usually is not. The things that finish off a summer shirt are sweat, antiperspirant, salt, and chlorine, and all four behave differently from mud on a sleeve. They are chemical rather than physical, they work slowly, and by the time you can see what they have done, the damage has already set.