The shirt is usually outerwear here

Here in warm, humid Malaysia business wear is usually a long or short sleeved worn with or without a tie. The jacket or suit usually reserved for meetings and functions unless you're a director, CEO etc. Then suddenly you wear a suit. But outside the confines of the air conditioned offices, the jacket is removed. Unless you get those unlined, unconstructed ones in an open weave summer fabric.

So the shirt becomes outerwear. Have many. And since they are outerwear do not be afraid to try out some patterns and textures - stripes, checks etc. for the sake of variety. Within the confines of good taste and your office dress code of course. For all occasions and for work rotation. About thirty to sixty days worth would be good. Having many shirts also allows shirts to last longer as you do not wear them out prematurely.

Button Down Shirt Collar Roll - Best with a Brooks Brothers OCBD shirt

This article is one of those articles on how to look prim and proper in hot and humid weather. Usually here in Malaysia it is too hot to wear any sort of jacket outdoors for longer than a few minutes. It is usually sans tie and jacket if one spends most of his time outdoors here. Of course, a nice unlined, unconstructed hopsack linen jacket and a very thin dress shirt could also do wonders. But let's have options for the average man here in the tropics. What would be the best shirt that would look good without a tie or a jacket? 

One of the nicest ready to wear (RTW) button down collared shirts that one can find are those made by Brooks Brothers. Button-down collars have points fastened down by buttons on the front of the shirt. These shirts were first introduced by the American clothing company Brooks Brothers in 1896 and were patterned after the shirts of polo players (who used to wear proper button down shirts instead of the polo shirts we see today). They were used exclusively on sports shirts until the 1950s in America. It is still considered a more casual shirt style because of its collar - different from the usual spread or pointed collars, which are considered as formal. Some do say that traditionalist would not wear a button down collared shirt with a suit as it is a shirt specifically for a sport (polo) and not one to wear with a suit.

Of shirt collars. Mine are definitely stiffer than yours - Collar inserts

Collar inserts or collar stays, tabs or even collar stiffeners are the same thing. Some shirts have built in collar stiffeners in them made out of plastic (these are usually found in dress or work shirts instead of button down shirts which are more casual in nature). I prefer those that have inserts which you can remove and use on other shirts.

The bad thing about those built in ones is that they only stiffen up the collars when the shirt is fairly new . After a about a year's of washing, whether by hand or by machine, these built in inserts would actually become flimsy or bent out of shape or even wear out the cotton in the collar. Or they could suffer if you use too much heat during ironing. With removable inserts you actually get the choice of removing them when washing the shirt (which prolongs the shirt's life as the insert does not rub against the cloth) or when ironing the shirt.