COLLARS AND TIES

Evening Star, Issue 19410, 19 November 1926, Page 5

COLLARS AND TIES

FLUCTUATIONS OF FASHION WHAT HEN OF TO-DAY HAVE ESCAPED “Captain Cuff, Captain Cuff I You may know him toy his collar 1”_ sang some long-dead comedian back in the mid-Victorian era, when collars were collars, and their wearers did- not I scruple to resort to extremes in order to have something “spectacular and different ” about their necks. To-day one is reminded (writes the London correspondent of the Sidney ‘Sun’), the modernist seeks chiefly comfort, which he finds in the soft collar, or at least the starched variety of commend-, able lowness.. In fact, as a London mercer who has spent fifty years selling collars points out, the present generation does not know what it has escaped in evading the torture of the collar which even middle-aged men of rto-day suffered in their youth. Men jest at women’s vanity in apparel, but women have a just retort. Not so long ago there was, perhaps, no. area in the world so subject to change to suit individuality or to meet the vagaries of the mode as the few inches between man’s chin and clavicle. A famous statesman gave his name to the “ Gladstone ” collar, in which the chin could be sunk in a cut-out area over the stud, while the points rose nearly to the corners of the mouth—a conceit which enabled the very poorest of cartoonists to indicate with abso- [ lute certainty the famous Liberal leader. This 'was the first Victorian essay in the collar that “was different,” but the succeeding years saw a veritable orgy in variety and extravagance. “ The Masher ” —he was a type once upon a time, although he seems now to be as dead as his nickname—looked upon the world over from four to even six inches of starched expanse, leading Phil May to frame a jest about “a donkey looking over a white-washed wall.” Those of us who were not sufficiently well equipped by nature to stretch our necks in such a refinement of the Chinese torture of the “ cangue ” did our best to peep over three inches of stiffness, and found the edge uncomfortably sharp at the gills. Then arrived tbe double collar, first very tall and uncomfortable, and requiring enormous skill in the adjustment of the tie, which always stuck in the back of the curve of the neck, and usually tore when, in desperation, one wrenched at it. In fact, some people believed that the haberdashers had invented the double collar in order to profit by the mortality among neckties. A COMPROMISE. There are historians in dress who assert that the double collar is a cross between the high upstanding variety and the very low splayed-out mode which the great singer, and especially tine teuore-robusto, affected in order to give the throat tbe freedom necessary to the production of resonant tones. Those were, for a time, at least, also the badge of the “artistic”—especially of ecentrio Thespians, spring poets, and bizarre artists. However that may be,, we to-day owe to the double collar the emancipation of our necks, for with its birth collars began to decline. “Oh! what a fall was there!” Within no time, or so it seemed,_ collars were a mere half-inch in height, and one had almost the sensation that men had suddenly adopted almost as complete a decolletage as the most daring of the fair sex. All this time the straight collar was fighting a rearguard action in its attempt to avoid extinction, and it put up its greatest stand in the evenings and upon official occasions. For, while the greatest beau might wear a double collar in a lounge suit, ho was under pain of being considered beyond tho pale unless he adopted an uprightness of collar when clad in a “ boiled shirt.” The straight collar won tho fight, hut only on a compromise. It allowed itself to he turned back at the throat and equipped with little wings, and upon those attributes of the butterfly—oi‘ the' cherub—it fluttered its way into a popularity which has remained for evening wear for nearly two decades. This, with the low double collar and the soft variety, patterned to match tho shirt, or not (according to one’s taste), has stabilised man’s neckwear—■ to use a technical expression. MADE-UP TIES. Indeed, our mercer with the fifty years’ experience points out that, although even now there are orders for the “ Gladstone ’ or the “ Beaufort,” three and a-half inches of starch is a rarity, and the demand for perpetually changing shapes has completely disappeared. And with it has gone the immense variety of ties which at one time fifed shop windows. How queer they seem nowadays! Many of them were '‘made up” because no'man eculd hope ever to tie them as they were suppled to be presented There was one that bunched up under the chin and boasted a supposed pearl to keep it tied and properly settled. There was another i which spread out nearly over the chest, iso that it was known as the “ chestprotector,” or among fellows of <ho baser sort as the “ Friday tie,” because its noble expanse could he relied upon 'to hide the ravages of the weeknpon the pristine whiteness of one’s linen. | There were tics that fastened to the 1 stud and were hold in space by clips under tho collar—they came in with the first of the double collars, and were designed to avoid the difficulty of adjusting tho tie, which refused to budge when tho collar had been bent round the neck. There were ties that were fastened by clastic or by a buckle or by a pin. Once upon a time, indeed, to be able to tie one’s own tie was regarded as the finest and surest sign of ! breeding. And to-day there are but two ties —the sailor's knot and the bow. That is wdten tics are worn. But ties, one imagines, are being somewdiat undermined in some circles by the freedom which has descended upon earth as a result of the soft collar. Every year, at least at holiday time and in the warmer months, more _ and mors people wear the cricket shirt and no tie, and the affectation _ among _ the jeunesse doreo of a certain type is to wear their shirts in Byronic fashion ; with the ends spread carefully over the coat. 1 Shirts are even being made with what might be termed permanent “turn-backs,” in order that the young blood may expose his manly bosom with the samo freedom ns his sister or his fiance reveals her dainty throat. On the other hand, the superior classes wear their open collars with a difference. It is with them de rigueur to turn up the collar negligently, and so to maintain

it. It is the old difference between the “made-up tie” and the “self-tied” variety again manifesting itself.