The Classic Club Collar Shirts

[Flat Foot Floey]

I have a question about the time and place when club collars have been worn.
They have a 1920s look but I think the stiff double round collar isn't the same thing as a soft club collar. So were they just for sports and workshirts? What about the contrasting collar. Of course it also reminds of the detachable versions but are they actually more appropriate?

 

[Edward]

Appreciate your faith ACL

Club collar with hand-made pin-holes, Single cuffs.

I've noticed that single cuffs are a common pairing with club collars, even from sources who often sell double cuffs (so it's not simply a case of the modern 'convertable cuff' being the standard). Is there a historical reason for this pairing?

 

[herringbonekid]

Flo,

the softer rounded shirt collar basically replaced the stiff round cornered Edwardian collar which would have looked rather stuffy among the young men of the 'jazz age' (early 20s).

it's worth noting that neither Montgomery Wards 1922 or Sears 1923 catalogues (which i have beside me) use the term 'club' collar. they refer to 'soft collars', 'stiff collars', 'laundered collars' and even 'rubber (celluloid) collars', and they call them by various style names such as 'Minton' and 'Upton' with a brief description along the lines of 'fancy striped madras in good style with rounded corners' or 'attractively striped soft collar. the extra long points fasten with buttons of ocean pearl'.

Pique fabric (a fancy weave similar to 'marcella' usually in cotton) is very common, as is madras, although madras doesn't resemble the bold plaids of today's madras but usually a fancy stripe.

the rounded corner collar was for everyday use, however it was by no means the dominant collar of the early 20s; a single page of Montgomery Ward's 1922 has collars in a large variety of shapes.


this page is a bit later but illustrates the variety:

the two rounded 'cleanable' collars on the bottom left read: " dull finish collars, closely resembling linen. easily cleaned with a damp cloth. front 2 1/4 inches. back 1 3/4 inches "

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

Thank you HBK,
I don't own many magazines and catalogues from the 20s. So the soft collar versions from Luxire, Savile Row Shirts, RL and Paul Fredrick are not far off, right?
It's a great help. So if I was to order a mtm-Shirt (from Luxire perhaps) I would now choose a pique fabric for the collar. Maybe I should learn sewing myself. I would try to make a detachable collar shirt with many collar styles, both same and contrast fabric.

 

[herringbonekid]

Flo, i wish you could still find shirt fabrics of the type that would have been used, but it's worth looking at the originals then trying to find as near as possible.

here's a bit of the Montgomery Ward 1922 page advertising 'pique' collars:

if it says 'self' it means that the stripes aren't in a contrasting colour, but are part of the woven texture (in white). see below:


here are some actual 20s collars, most likely pique. textures like this are almost impossible to find today:

those would have been attached to shirts made out of bolder stripes such as these (mid 20s):

 

[herringbonekid]

or attached to the really fancy fabrics such as these from around 1919:

 

[herringbonekid]

and here's a round collar work shirt:

 

[herringbonekid]

i got a Montgomery Ward 1920 catalogue today and i noticed it has one mention of a collar with the word 'club' in it:

... unlike the catalogues mentioned above.

 

[Aoresteen]

Land's End has them on sale for $30.

http://www.landsend.com/ix/mens-clo...isible=1~2~1~1~1&sort=Recommended&pageSize=24

 

[Evan Everhart]

Club collars are loads of fun! I often wear them when going to the races with my tweeds and flannels (and NO trilby!) They really look very fetching with a wonderfully striped or patterned fabric shirt, I often like shirts with diamond patterns or rosettes, or bold variegated stripes, or both diamonds and stripes! I'm particularly fond of piney greens like tourmaline colour, or deep lilac, or rust, or combinations of all three, oh, and micro-ginghams and etc.

Oh, and let us not forget horizontally striped breast-plates on our tunic shirts (when the rest of the shirt is striped in the typical manner)

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

I found the club collar in this Tyrone Power picture remarkable small.

And I like how tight this one is pinned.

 

[herringbonekid]

is that Tyrone P in the last pic too ?

(agree the first one is tiny !)

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

No, it's a guy named Franchot Tone. Found both pictures on tumblr which is usually pretty bad with sources, dates or other background information.[huh] Just a big pile of random pictures.

 

[herringbonekid]

i'm planning a 20s collar shirt, but have decided that the rounded corner isn't for me, so will go for a square end (like top left, below, with a tab):

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

From: http://arrowcollarman.tumblr.com


PS: I recently got 2 club collar shirts. One from the fleamarket with eyelets for a collar pin and another one custome made by Vecona with bold Leyendecker style stripes.
Pictures will follow soon.

 

[herringbonekid]

which silly billy put the collars at the top upside down ?

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

Haha, yes. But I didn't know detachable collars came with a neckband in the pattern of the shirt. Doesn't seem logical to me since one could use one white collar on several shirts...

 

[herringbonekid]

might have been a way for the more expensive brands to produce collars that were 'exclusive' to each shirt design ... just for added 'luxury' appeal ?

 

[Fading Fast]

No, it's a guy named Franchot Tone. Found both pictures on tumblr which is usually pretty bad with sources, dates or other background information.[huh] Just a big pile of random pictures.

Franchot Tone is one of those actors who seems today to fly under the radar, but he made a lot of movies in the 1930a / 40a and, in several of the ones I've seen, he is incredibly well dressed. I've read conflicting accounts of the 1930s / 40s studio system in that some say the studios controlled everything that an actor wore on screen (and even influenced what he / she wore off) and others that say many actors used their own wardrobes in roles. My guess is it is somewhere in between, where the bigger stars had more influence to choose their clothes.

All that said, it is clear that certain actors cared greatly about their clothes - Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, when appropriate to the role, always look incredibly well dressed down to the smallest detail (pocket square, collar pin) and perfectly tailored - and Franchot Tone is one of them. I recently saw him in "Three Loves has Nancy" and he out-dressed the also-always-well-tailored Robert Montgomery. It's a shame that today, even in movies that focus on style, such as "The Great Gatsby," close attention to sartorial detail is not paid. To that point, these are my comment on The Great Gatsby from the thread "What is the last movie you watched":

I saw the new version of "The Great Gatsby" last night.

There is a reason you don't let kids run free in a candy store. For the same reason, someone needed to rein in the the director of "The Great Gatsby." When you have a strong story from one of the finest novels of the Twentieth Century, you shouldn't bury it in noise, flash and technology; you should create a framework that appeals to modern audiences, but puts the original work front and center.

Instead, this latest Gatsby is a visual and auditory assault of computer generated images (CGI), modern and pounding music and over-stylized sets and scenes. CGI is so overused and exaggerated that many scenes look liked animation trying to appear lifelike. The club music combined with the whirl of fantasized 1920s images distracts from the narrative while the heavily choreographed scenes belong in a musical not a drama: It felt as if the director really wanted to make a musical version of Gatsby, but he didn't have the audacity to put the dialogue in song.

Buried in this welter of visual and auditory noise, are fine performances from Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway and Leonardo DeCaprio as Gatsby and, of course, Fitzgerald's tale itself of all-consuming love and madness playing out in a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches rise followed by a class-crashing induced fall. For fans of the story, you can find bits of it (and movie-making license that goes beyond the book), but the search is exhausting.

And for those dedicated to historical accuracy and attention to detail - as most members of this board are - the movie will be nails on a chalk board. But most members of the general audience aren't Fedora Lounge members. So fair enough, the director didn't have to be faithful to historical accuracy (see the TV show "Hell on Wheels" for an example of using modern music that is respectful to the history of the time period), but by intentionally affronting it, he created a cartoonish version that doesn't update, but instead overwhelms, the story.

When it was done, I wanted to pop in the 1970s version to make sure it was still there. Better still, I want to pick up the book and "see" it as it was originally intended with Fitzgerald's words creating the images in my mind.

Last point for FL members: the clothes have their moments as some of Nick Carraway's and Gatsby's outfits are striking, but as has been mentioned many times on this board before, and by members meaningfully more knowledgeable than I, their historical accuracy is suspect.

Away from that, I was bothered by how poorly tailored some of the outfits are. Gatsby's pants in the high-profile pink suit has too many breaks to count and there are several collars that do not fit and some of the jackets are so tight it looks as if just breathing is an issue for the actors.

Having recently seen Cary Grant in "Suspicion," it is clear that the elegant subtly of fine tailoring is something modern Hollywood has lost in its quest for surface impact and splash - not a bad metaphor for all that is wrong with this production of Gatsby.

 

[simonc]

Does anyone know if work shirts of any kind had club collars? Any pics?