On Spread Collars

For as long as I can remember I have excluded from my shirt collection anything betraying even the minutest hint of a forward point, club, or tab collar. This means, I suspect, some imperfectly angled spread collared shirts have been avoided. If so, so be it. I simply can not tolerate anything but genuine spread or button-down styles. I mostly wear the former during the balance of the week, and the latter only on Fridays and weekends. For me there is no alternative. It is the collar style that most suits my neck and face. Above is pictured one of my custom-made Hemrajani dress shirts with a wide spread collar, referred to as an English cut-away collar. I recommend Hemrajani, although, unlike certain Interweb columnists, I have no commercial intere$t in doing so. This specific shirt is in the colour cream, which, according to Jeremy Hackett, "has almost disappeared off the radar as far as men's shirts are concerned." Not in my wardrobe it hasn't!

The spread collar (often called an English collar since it was first popularised in England in the 1930s by the Duke of Windsor to accommodate the larger knotted kneckties he favoured--and that bear his name) is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the button-downs. If the button-down is consciously casual and cavalier, the spread collar is purposefully elegant and dressy. It is happiest with the larger knot of the full- or half-Windsor with which it was originally paired and with suits of impeccable shape and cut. It is meant to be serious and perhaps a bit autocratic, and its sangfroid is completely destroyed by a bow tie.

Elegance, G. Bruce Boyer (1985)