I stopped by Anne Fontaine on Madison Avenue yesterday for a little inspiration but felt strangely flat afterward, so today I visited Sao in Soho. I’m re-inspired.


The designs are classy and the fabric beautiful. She includes French seams in her regular shirts, but Anne Fontaine only uses them in her couture line. The Sao shirts, which cost less than the Anne Fontaine shirts, seem higher in quality to me. Perhaps the difference in price is that Sao makes her shirts in New York while Anne Fontaine imports hers from France.

Her size 12/14 shirts were only slightly baggy on me, and the gap at my bustline could have been fixed almost unnoticeably with a safety pin. My guess is that if you’re a C or D cup with a 34″ band or less, you could look great in one of these shirts.

In the meantime, I’ll keep searching for (or creating) a classy button-down shirt for the rest of us.