Do You Guys Even Know What Kind of Collar Your Shirt Has?
If you can believe it, there are different kinds of collars on shirts that men may wear to work and play. And some of them are better for you, and for situations, than others! Do you want to talk about this with me?
The Straight-Point Collar
Oh you are quite possibly wearing this. You could ideally be wearing a nice collar stay, slipped inside the collar, should your shirt have little tiny stay pockets on the inside.
The Spread Collar
Oh, hooray, a name that sounds like what it means. A spread collar has points that aren’t so near! Here is a rather judgmental and detailed take on how far your collar spread should be. It should interact with the lines of your face! Thin men can wear a spread collar, not a long droopy one. Lots of websites are obsessed with this! Me, less so. Make yourself happy.
You can go too far with a spread collar. As certain mayors have.
That is a lot of spread.
At a certain point, by the way, the medium spread collar is almost indistinguishable from a straight point collar.
And also, yeah: this is probably something a man should think about for eight minutes in his life: what collar shape suits me? Then, you know, do whatever you want. (Just don’t wear a button-down collar with a nice suit.)
The Button-Down Collar
Right. Asked and answered. A BUTTON-DOWN COLLAR, IT HAS BUTTONS!
The Varsity Collar
The what now?
So the “varsity collar” is a kind of spread collar where its little wings point a bit out from the middle. (See the curve on the inside of the collar?) This might be great for somebody but I can’t imagine.
Here’s an interesting note, from two years ago, about the picture above — about Land’s End rolling out a “shorter collar shape of the first Original Oxford,” so as to accomodate today’s skinnier ties. This makes sense! And this illustration is a fairly decent guide to collar-tie interactions. You would not want to wear a big pointy foofy collar out to your shoulders with some skinny tie.
Tab Collar
Eek, it has a small tab, that goes underneath your tie, above the button! It freaks me out! I have never!
Club Collar
The club collar is rrroundsies! I’m scared to wear these. But there is a time and a place. For instance.
Banker’s Collar
This is no longer actually a collar, in most cases. They used to be detachable, the white colors on a non-white shirt! Now we say “banker’s collar” to refer to a white color on a colored shirt. These are fun to wear with irony downtown, or so I hear.
Collar shapes aren’t just for dress shirts. This is a spread collar on a polo!
Are your polo shirt collars long and droopy, accentuating your long and droopy face?
There, I gave you something to worry about today! My work here is done.
Sponsored posts are purely editorial content that we are pleased to have presented by a participating sponsor, advertisers do not produce the content. This series/post is brought to you by Gillette. Learn more about Gillette and its products at Gillette.com.
