I've been a lover and customer of Jermyn Street for about thirty years, though long ago decided that the very best shirts are made by Hilditch & Key - no news at all to all those who repeatedly buy via Sale by Mail. But on the Street itself, unwary shoppers can sometimes become confused by the quantity of stuff on offer - and because, folded in its plastic bag, one shirt looks much like another, they might unwittingly find themselves buying a far inferior product. Many so-called Jermyn Street shirts are made in factories all over the world, so consistency and dependable quality are quite impossible. Of all the shops in Jermyn Street, only Hilditch & Key has its own dedicated factory just north of Edinburgh - and you won't find the same product bearing a different label, either: Hilditch & Key make for no one else.

I visited the factory once, and it's an extraordinary sight: scrupulously clean, strangely inviting [everyone is very cheery] and as regimented as Sandhurst. Close to the start of the production line, you encounter a man with a large, curved and deadly knife. He cuts out by hand the main blade of the collar [one of fourteen separate parts that go into making the whole thing, believe it or not - necessary to make it sit as perfectly as it does]. That the very finest cottons go to making the shirts one need hardly say, and every stage of the operation is checked and rechecked: quality control is 100% - you will never see a Hilditch & Key "second", for such a thing has never existed. Put quite simply, if there was any way at all that the shirt could be improved, then it would be done. But Hilditch & Key have thought of everything - even to the matching of the pattern where the sleeves meet the body of the shirt, a detail that's virtually unique. The final stage is the folding - this is done by a group of amazing women faster than the eye can follow the procedure, each one perfect and slipped like lightning into its cellophane bag. Which is where we came in: it now looks much like any other shirt. But it isn't, as the very first wearing will prove - this is the real McCoy, a Hilditch & Key: the very best shirt in the world.

Joseph Connolly

Joseph Connolly's latest novel is JACK THE LAD AND BLOODY MARY,
published by Faber and Faber at £12.99

Other articles by Joseph Connolly and Colin Cameron that may be of interest:
Black Tie, Gekko's on Wall Street, James Bond and Aston Martin, Hilditch & Key in Paris,
London Shops