How to Make a Dress Shirt Hug Your Body

A properly fitted dress shirt is both flirty and classy.

Dress shirts can appear shapeless and ill-fitting if purchased in the wrong size and cut for your frame. To make a dress shirt hug your body, use accessories to cinch the waist or invest in a more permanent solution such as adding darts. Darts are parallel stitches typically added at the back of the shirt or under the armpits to give the shirt a more fitted look.

Things You'll Need

• Sewing pins
• Sewing tape
• Sewing machine
• Thread
• Scissors
• Belt, optional

Instructions

1. Unbutton the shirt. You will be working from the inside of the dress shirt to add darts.

2. Begin on one side of the back. Pin the fabric so that it overlaps slightly, forming a vertical line of pins that extends approximately three-quarters of the way up your shirt.

3. Lay the dress shirt out flat and use your sewing tape to measure the appropriate spot for the second dart. Ensure that both darts are placed an equal distance from the center of the back.

4. Pin the up the second dart.

5. Try on the shirt to see how it fits. If the darts are satisfactory, proceed with Step 6. If not, readjust the darts to take in less or more of the shirt as desired.

6. Place the bottom of the dart under the needle of the sewing machine.

7. Steadily feed the shirt under the threaded needle of the sewing machine until you reach the end of the pins, removing each pin as you go until you reach the end of the pins.

8. Gently maneuver the shirt back towards you along what you have just sewn to finish the dart and then cut the thread with scissors.

9. Add a fashionable belt to further cinch your dress shirt at the waist and hug your body.

Tips & Warnings

• You can also use a belt without adding the darts if you're in a pinch for time.