Detachable Collars on Boys' Shirts: Material


Figure 1.--We note from the photograhic record that many boys wore detachable collars in the late-19th and early-20th century. What we can not tell from the photographs is the material used for the collars.

We see detachable collars done in various materials. The first ones were cloth fabric collars. These would be heavily starched for best appearances. They could be laundered and then reused. Linen collars needed to be taen to laundries. There were also celuloid and paper collrs as well as rubber colars. There were also collrs done on cardboard. Paper collars were apparently not often used by boys. We see tese collars offered in period catalogs. Paper collars were discaded after use. We have also seen rubber collars, but they were not very common. We have not seen them in very many catalog. A problem here is that it is no readily apparent from avialbable photographs the material of detachable collar. The information from catalogs is a better source of information.

Fabric

Detachable collars were made in both cotton and linen. Linnen was the most expensive collar and used for the stiff formal look. Cotton was used for both a casual soft look, but they could be sarched. People would have special collar boxes to store these fabric collars, especially the linen ones. These collars had the disadvantage that they had to washed and starched. This in effect increased the cost of wearing these collars. Unfortunately, while we can often spoy detachable collars in old photographs, it is virtully impossible to determine the material used for the collars that we see in period portraits.

Celluloid

some detachable collars beginning in the 1870s were made of celuloid--a kind of early plastic. They were very stiff ad esopecuially uncomfortable. They had little or no material texture or guive to them as the wearer moved his head. The collar was made from interlined acetate. This was a material made from white linen coated with acetate. This made the collar look like ,fine linnen, but wear like plastic. The collars did not wilt and the button holes were durable. Theu could be cleaned with soap and water. We have very limited information at this time, but we think these went out of fashion, at least by the 1920s. A reader writes, "Maybe detachable collars were made of some combination of paper and celuloid, but celuloid was, I think, glossy, and didn't have the linen finish of paper. I never wore celuloid collars. But I did wear both linen and paper detachable collars with neckband shirts and on occasions when I wanted to look especially formal (e.g., at cocktail parties in sections of London such as Belgravia and Mayfair and at dressy hotels and restaurants). I recall a weekend in London during the early 1950s when I showed up at the Berkeley Hotel (just across the street from the even fancier Ritz in Picadilly but now an automobile showroom) in a dark blue suit with white shirt and detachable paper collar and blue-and-white polka-dot tie. This was as formal as you could get in those days without making the transition into actual dinner clothes (dinner jackets and tails). I was refused entrance into the main dining room at 8 PM because I wasn't wearing "black tie" (a dinner jacket). Nowadays, such dress codes have almost totally disappeared except at the London clubs where a jacket and tie are still required, even for breakfast."

Paper

The one kind of artificial collar that did persist (at least in Great Britain) was paper collars. An American reader writes, "I used to wear these myself as late as the 1970s in London, because you could still buy neckband shirts there in those days, and paper collars were fairly common and looked extremely dressy. You bought a set of six paper collars (very inexpensive) in cheap shops (Woolworths, for instance--the British equivalent of five and dimes). They looked like starched linen and were attached to neckband shirts in front and in back by collar pins. One reason, I suppose, was that the professional laundering and starching of linen collars (which the wealthy still wore with neckband shirts) was very expensive, so paper collars were quite popular with young men of modest means who worked in banks and the City (the financial district), where quite formal dress was still required. But I don't think boys wore paper collars very much after World War II, except possibly at posh 'public' schools where boys (in the upper forms at least) wore suits with waistcoats and stiff collars with ties."

Rubber

We have also seen rubber collars, but they were not very common. We have not seen them in very many catalog. An examples is the Canadian Eaton's catalog in 1907. It seems to us a material that would not be very comfortable at the neck. Eatons offered four of them. They seem to be standard collar types only made in rubber. Rubber collars had the advantage of being washable with a sponge or a cloth and could be cleaned by just wiping them off the way today we would wipe off a counter top. White collars were the most easily soiled of any item in a boy's dress--at least his visible dress--and the laundering of linen collars was expensive and time-consuming because of the process of heavy starching. Hence manufacturers developed all sorts of non-cloth collars that could be either cheaply replaced. We haven't noticed them in American catalogs, but this is not a tpic tht we were actively researching. A reader writes, "I actually hadn't noticed rubber collars in other catalogs either, but then like you I wasn't looking for them. I suspect that they didn't last much after the middle 1920s, and they may have gone out of style even before that--maybe during the 1910s." We have no information on just how rubber collars were received by consumers. We note quite a number offered in the Eaton's 1917 catalog. A survey of the Sears catalogs show that they were offered there for men and boys throughout the 1900s and 10s. The Sears catalog for 1920 still offers rubber collars, although not many of them. But they disappear from the catalogs after that. Unfortunately we can't follow this in the photographic record because the material of the collar is not apparent from a photograph.






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Created: 5:25 PM 4/2/2008
Last updated: 9:18 PM 4/9/2008