MARKET COLLARED

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32902, 28 April 1972, Page 1

MARKET COLLARED

In the midst of generally gloomy news from the Canterbury industrial front, it is heartening to learn that Mr J. Wing, of Victoria Street, Christchurch, has collared a growing market in Wellington. Mr Wing, launderer-in-chief for several generations of the stiff collars worn by Christ’s College schoolboys, said yesterday that he was now obtaining a good supply of collars from Wellington, particularly from the Supreme Court. “We now launder stiff collars from Invercargill to Taupo,” said Mr Wing, referring to himself and his wife.

It is not only judges and lawyers in Wellington who avail themselves of Mr Wing’s services. His most recent customer from the capital is a newspaper executive who cannot find a launderer in Wellington to make immaculate the collars he wears to weddings and on other special occasions.

Mr Wing’s business with Christ’s College suffered a decline this summer when the new beadmaster (Mr A. M. Brough) relaxed the cen-tury-old rule to permit the boys to wear sports clothes (blazers, grey flannel bags and soft shirts) to lessons on hot days. Mr Wing recalls, with a sigh, the days when all new boys at Christ’s College had to wear Eton collars — wide collars that went over the collars of suit coats. A natural regard for the legal profession and the Judiciary has been exhibited by Mr Wing for many

years. He is rather averse to the statutory limitation on the number of judges and most encouraging in his attitude towards students taking law. Mr Wing has not increased his price for laundering the ordinary stiff collar, pointed or rounded, in the last two years — it is still 7c. The highest price for making immaculate any type of stiff collar is 9c.

A cheerful person, Mr Wing is unworried by differential freight rates and wage-price freezes; like many another Industrious South Islander he may have his eye on the Auckland market.