The Best Western Shirts Buck the Rest of Your Button-Ups

Cowboy style has officially taken over our cities. Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show (and Timmy’s recent Bob Dylan turn) has confirmed that bootcut jeans are poised for a grand comeback, yeehaw-ready boots are clomping down the halls of our offices, and perhaps most of all, Western shirts are currently the informed-guy’s first choice when he wants to dress things up a touch—sorry, Oxford-cloth button downs.

If you’re new to the style, welcome—there’s so much to like about it. Those detailed shoulder panels? Besides looking pretty, they’re reinforcing the shirt’s yoke, so it won’t wear down as easily. The best Western shirts also have fancy details like pearl snap buttons (that don’t come off as easily as regular buttons), and handy chest pockets that, while once used for cowboy essentials, can now neatly fit your own essentials. Say, airpods and chapstick?

As for how to shop for the style, I’m glad to report that while there’s a very satisfying, broad range out on the market, I’ve herded the very best back here for your browsing pleasure. From heritage makers like Wrangler and Levi’s to fashion-forward brands like Our Legacy and prepsters like Sid Mashburn, many of our best and brightest designers are currently stocking a Western. The 15 below will help you harness (heh) your inner rancher all season long.

The Best Western Shirts, According to GQ

Best Western Shirt Overall: Wrangler Men’s Denim Collection Snap Shirt

Wrangler has long made shirts for actual cowboys, who love the brand because its quality remains high even as its prices stay relatively low. This makes it a great pick for your first Western shirt, or your fifteenth. It has all of the requisite details you’d expect from a western-styled piece, from snappy buttons to contrast stitching across the yoke, but the addition of a subtly branded pocket logo takes this otherwise simple ranch-ready shirt into style swerve territory. And hey, once you know you love it, you can then stock up on the other washes, from light faded blue all the way up to black.

Best Upgrade Western Shirt: Flint and Tinder Bone Button Western Shirt

If you’re not shopping for the true baseline option, but still want something that is more or less the definition of the style, this slightly elevated version is likely the one for you. Slight refinements throughout the design—burnt cow bone snaps, reinforced stitching—take the shirt from purely being about hardwearing function and pitch it in a slightly more dressed up spot. (The Flint and Tinder cotton is a little softer than most, too.) No wonder it’s also got hundreds of five-star reviews from happy Huckberry shoppers.

Best Dressier Western Shirt: Sid Mashburn Cotton Chambray Western Shirt

Chambray is a much lighter weight of cotton, so lends itself a bit more to dressing up and layering. This style from Sid Mashburn—a scientist when it comes to marrying rugged with refined—takes elements of a dress shirt, such as a cutaway collar, and combines it with tried and true western details. Shiny pearl snap buttons give it a nice jolt of elegance, and there’s even an elongated hem at the back to keep it properly tucked.

Best Off-White Western Shirt: Levi’s Barstow Western Denim Shirt

Along with Wrangler, Levi’s are very much the other big name in cowboy outfitting. The Barstow shirt is the brand’s staple western style, and while it indeed comes in blue, it was so popular that it now also conveniently comes in a range of colours outside the expected range. We’re particularly partial to this off white, bone colorway that’ll easily slide into your wardrobe as a true neutral (and tone down the whole Canadian tuxedo thing, if it feels too much to you.)

Best Investment Western Shirt: RRL Denim Buffalo Western Workshirt

Ralph Lauren’s ranch life-inspired arm, RRL, is known for having even higher quality than the Polo line, and in most cases the regular Ralph Lauren line also. The idea of the collection was that it would be full of pieces Ralph could wear on his Colorado ranch, and given that it’s all designed for the boss, no compromises are ever made. This shirt is no different: Pocket stitch details and a subtly unique top button are just some of the hints that tell everyone that this isn’t your standard western shirt, this is a RRL western shirt. (And for what it’s worth, Huckberry currently has so many more.)

Best Fashion-Guy Western Shirt: Our Legacy Gray Frontier Denim Shirt

Freaky tweakers of classic clothing, Our Legacy has lent its Swedish punk sensibilities to an American classic with their Frontier Shirt. Oversized and made from denim that has a washed out, uneven tone (in the best way possible), this is a softened Western shirt that still has all the confidence of the urban cowboy that you are.

More Western Shirts We Love

How We Test and Review Products

Style is subjective, we know—that’s the fun of it. But we’re serious about helping our audience get dressed. Whether it’s the best white sneakers, the flyest affordable suits, or the need-to-know menswear drops of the week, GQ Recommends’ perspective is built on years of hands-on experience, an insider awareness of what’s in and what’s next, and a mission to find the best version of everything out there, at every price point.

Our staffers aren’t able to try on every single piece of clothing you read about on GQ.com (fashion moves fast these days), but we have an intimate knowledge of each brand’s strengths and know the hallmarks of quality clothing—from materials and sourcing, to craftsmanship, to sustainability efforts that aren’t just greenwashing. GQ Recommends heavily emphasizes our own editorial experience with those brands, how they make their clothes, and how those clothes have been reviewed by customers. Bottom line: GQ wouldn’t tell you to wear it if we wouldn’t.

How We Make These Picks

We make every effort to cast as wide of a net as possible, with an eye on identifying the best options across three key categories: quality, fit, and price.

To kick off the process, we enlist the GQ Recommends braintrust to vote on our contenders. Some of the folks involved have worked in retail, slinging clothes to the masses; others have toiled for small-batch menswear labels; all spend way too much time thinking about what hangs in their closets.

We lean on that collective experience to guide our search, culling a mix of household names, indie favorites, and the artisanal imprints on the bleeding-edge of the genre. Then we narrow down the assortment to the picks that scored the highest across quality, fit, and price.

Across the majority of our buying guides, our team boasts firsthand experience with the bulk of our selects, but a handful are totally new to us. So after several months of intense debate, we tally the votes, collate the anecdotal evidence, and emerge with a list of what we believe to be the absolute best of the category right now, from the tried-and-true stalwarts to the modern disruptors, the affordable beaters to the wildly expensive (but wildly worth-it) designer riffs.

Whatever your preferences, whatever your style, there’s bound to be a superlative version on this list for you. (Read more about GQ’s testing process here.)