It's bad enough you're forced to wear button-downs to work, but adding insult to injury are their annoyingly unnecessary structural defects -- it's like sitting in an electric chair that also smells bad. For an obsessively achieved solution, try just-launched clothier Zachary Prell.

ZP was founded by an ex-Wall Streeter who spent three years creating his ultimate office shirt (including one year scouring mills around the world for fabric soft enough for hard-working men). The result's a shirt free of the odd button spacing, bunching, and other imperfections that can make wearing even a high-end label a nagging hell. The details:

Tuck: can wear in or out -- or both at once, for the faux-unkempt look (the shirtish equivalent of premeditated bedhead)

Fit: falls comfortably between Euro-thin and American-boxy/moderately obese

Cuffs: fit over even the most enormous watch

Collar: works with or without tie (and because only a freak would horde collar stays, a new pair's provided w/ each shirt)

And most importantly

Button placement: You won't experience carotid constriction while wearing a tie, and undoing the top button won't expose so much chest hair that people assume you were bitten by a Barry Gibb-wolf.

ZP's do carry one subtly distinguishing bit of flava: piping running down each side-seam, sewn from Italian silk satin and available in colors that either match or contrast the shirt. The piping's not ostentatious -- it's just an aesthetic reminder that, while they can force you into a collared shirt, they can't force you into one that sucks.