@henwortschmidt - I greatly prefer stretch woven button-up dress shirts with elastane / spandex / lycra, and will go out of my way to only purchase ones that contain stretch.
I suspect this is because:
- My build has always naturally tended to carry more weight, having more of a straight torso-to-waist, and larger thighs, making it more difficult for me to fit well into OTR clothing. This is much less of an issue with clothing with stretch
- I've not had great experiences with bespoke or MTM clothing, where I prefer wearing that over slightly more generous cuts. I normally feel a bit more constricted than I personally prefer. That said, I'm doing some testing of MTM dress shirts that have stretch, to see how that combination works for me.
I just received delivery of two new, very handsome, dress shirts from Asquith Brown, one of which is called Powel with a 97/3 blend (3% spandex).
I generally prefer a larger percent of spandex, but I have found the woven dress shirts with 3-5% notably more comfortable than ones with none.
Additionally, I will only purchase stretch pants/jeans as well, for the same reason of greater comfort & mobility.
As for sourcing button-up dress shirts with stretch, you are very correct in saying that it's very difficult to locate such shirts.
I have found some stretch long sleeve button-up shirts on Amazon & Asos, but they are a hair on the casual side. That said, I do prefer wearing them over my other non-stretch woven dress shirts.
I know that some brands are making performance dress shirts with stretch, such as Mizzen+Main, Ministry of Supply, State & Liberty, etc. Google "Performance Dress Shirt" and you'll come up with a good list.
I plan to test my Asquith Brown Powel stretch dress shirt very soon, so we'll see how that goes.
