The starched high detachable collar

 Just to prove that women don’t have a monopoly on silly and potentially dangerous fashion accoutrements, let’s have a look at something that was a la mode in the latter half of the 19^th century, the starched high detachable collar. As you might expect, the collar, usually made of cotton, was separate from the shirt to which it was attached by studs, usually made of brass. It was always white in colour and highly starched so that it had a hard, unforgiving feel about it.

It sort of made sense. The exposed parts of the shirt – the collar and cuffs – were the parts of the garment which attracted the grease and grime of everyday living. In the days when laundering garments was a performance, the body of the shirt could be worn for several days without being washed. All you had to do to maintain a pristine appearance, leaving aside body odour considerations, was to detach the collar and replace it. Simple.

The story goes that the detachable collar owes its origin to the resourcefulness of Hannah Montague. In 1820 her blacksmith husband, Orlando, complained that he didn’t have a clean white shirt to wear when he got home in the evening. Whether in a fit of pique or not, Hannah proceeded to snip off the collars from all of his shirts and sewed them back on whenever he needed to give the appearance of wearing a freshly laundered chemise.

It sounds a bit of a shaggy dog story to me but the scene of this domestic drama was Troy in New York and the community did become a major centre for the production of detachable collars, so much so that it is still known as Collar City today. Perhaps it helped to have a homely image to boost the sale and popularity of the collar. Alas, the last vestige of the industry, Cluett, Peabody & Company, moved out of Troy in 1989.

The problem with the collar was the winged tips. They were so pointed and hard from the amount of starch used that they looked positively lethal. And they were. In Germany they were known as Vatermörder or father killers.

A detachable collar was part of a well-dressed man’s dinner attire. From my experience there are two problems with attending formal dinners – the copious amounts of alcohol on offer and the interminable after dinner speeches. Either on their own are enough to make even the hardened diner feel the need to rest their eyes and therein lay the problem.

An injudicious desire to nod off could result in your neck resting against the points. If you were too firmly in the arms of Morpheus you ran the risk of cutting off the blood supply to the carotid artery. Another problem was that they were rather tight and so any swelling to the neck caused by indigestion could result in strangulation.

And there were fatalities.

In 1888 the New York Times, which seemed to have a thing about the excesses of fashion, ran an obituary of one John Creutzi with the headline; “choked by his collar.”  The unfortunate Creuzi was found dead in a park. The coroner summarised his unfortunate demise; “the Coroner thought the man had been drinking, seated himself on a bench, and fell asleep. His head dropped over on his chest and then his stiff collar stopped the windpipe and checked the flow of blood through the already contracted veins, causing the death to ensue from asphyxia and apoplexy.”  I hope it had been a good dinner.

Despite these unfortunate mishaps, the detachable collar is still worn today, perhaps under the mistaken impression that their erect line is a sign of virility. If you are tempted to put one on, just be careful!