All products featured on GQ are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
The best corduroy shirts for men are, as hyperbolic headlines are fond of saying, Having a Moment™. The reasons for that moment are pretty straightforward: corduroy is rich and hardy, warm and reliable, a blue-collar fabric that feels sorta fancy. Deployed in the form of a shirt or a jacket—or, better yet, a shirt jacket—it’s as useful a mid-layer as they come, delivering a subtle hit of texture and elevating everything around it like an André 3000 guest verse.
That’s why you can find it pretty much everywhere these days: on rugged outerwear, swanky tailoring, and, of course, a vast array of winter-friendly pants in every type of silhouette. Corduroy might not boast the omnipresence of denim or the ballroom-ready vibes of velvet, but that’s exactly why we dig it. Take any button-up in your closet, do it up in a fine or wide wale cord, and voila: you’re left with a shirt no one else in your group chat owns—but everyone will be asking about.
When it comes to pulling one off, we’re not campaigning on behalf of some radical, heretofore unknown swerve. Corduroy shirts are just shirts, after all, and anything you’d normally wear with the button-ups in your rotation—blue jeans and black boots, slouchy dress trousers and chunky derbies, sweats and slip-ons—is fair game. Whether you’re eager to ditch the workweek OCBDs or just desperate to differentiate yourself from the flannel-clad masses on the weekend, the best corduroy shirts for men (17 of which we very conveniently gathered here) will help your fits strike the right, ahem, chord all season long.
The Best Corduroy Shirts Shopping Guide
The Best Western-Inspired Corduroy Shirt
For the last few months, J.Crew’s been hard at work plumbing its legendary archives, so it follows that the prep purveyor’s western-inspired corduroy shirt undercuts its roots with a sizable dose of Nantucket energy. Unlike its denim counterparts, this shirt comes done up in a tropical turquoise hue that reads anywhere but ranch. If you’re a little apprehensive about the idea of double-denim rendering you some kind of rodeo poser, pick up this shirt and rock it with the type of American classics favorites by stylish fellas on both coasts, and pretty much everywhere between: jeans and loafers, chinos and slip-ons, or tweedy trousers and derbies.
The Best Beach-Ready Corduroy Shirt
1970s beach bums loved them a high-rise pair of corduroy shorts, so you know that the fabric is no stranger to an oceanside escape. Kelly Slater-helmed Outerknown cuts its shirt from a lightweight, sand-hued cord that will stack up nicely with a pair of ultra-loud board shorts, but can easily pull double duty on days when you’re more likely to ride a subway than a gnarly wave.
The Best Corduroy Shirt You Can Wear With a Suit
Bringing corduroy into the suiting realm doesn’t have to mean getting your style direct from Wes Anderson. But much like a corduroy suit is inherently less stuffy than in one wool, a corduroy shirt can help you dress down even top-tier tailoring. The fine wale on this tasteful design from Drake’s has a subtle, elegant texture—and the chocolate brown hue will breathe new life into the otherwise simple gray suit already hanging in your closet, with the added benefit of slotting in nicely with your favorite washed-out jeans.
The Best Corduroy Shirt That’s More Like a Chore Coat
The chore coat is a wardrobe mainstay favored for good reason: its got pockets galore to stash your daily necessities, and it remains the best layering friend a guy could ask for. Most come in denim or some flip on canvas, but this tasty corduroy number from Todd Snyder packs just as much function with a whiff more pizazz. Wear it over a turtleneck for some light-yet-sophisticated aprés ski vibes, or under your biggest, baddest topcoat to add a little intrigue and texture to your top half.
The Best Retro-Doused Corduroy Shirt
Everything about this Ralph Lauren shirt skews classic: the fit, for starters, which is trim but not billow-y, and is made even better by a medium-wale corduroy. But really, the detail that makes this shirt feel like a precious vintage find is the camp collar, which gives it a thoroughly laid-back feel. In other words, this is the button-up you should wear over a white tee for a little hit of textural contrast or, for the big flexers out there, over absolutely nothing when the weather warms up.
The Best Corduroy Shirt for Courtside Viewing
If corduroy—beefy, burly, and decidedly unprecious—isn’t the first material that comes to mind when you think of high-octane luxury fashion, Francesco Risso would like a word. Earlier this year, the Marni kahuna linked with Carhartt, the first name in All-American workwear, to design a collection jam-packed with the stuff. The standout is the duo’s shirt jacket, a mash-up of Carhartt’s indestructible duck canvas and key hits of corduroy in rich brown and screaming red tones. Corduroy’s hard-wearing pedigree means the whole shebang wouldn’t look entirely out place at a very fashion-forward jobsite, but it’ll look even better keeping you warm while you wave to fans on the Jumbotron.
