The dress shirt has quite a long history, going back in its present form to the Victorian age. While there have been changes in the standard design of the dress shirt over the intervening years, many aspects of it have remained as they were. But one notable change has been the sudden appearance and then the fall of the detachable collar.
The detachable collar is said to have been discovered accidentally in 1827: a woman in upstate New York cut her husband’s collar off his short to wash it, then sewed it back on afterwards. A local businessman commercialised the idea and a new style was born.
A detachable collar is physically separate from the body of the shirt and often made of different material. Certainly it was made of stiffer material, stiff in fact to the point of rigidity. This pre-shaped collar was fastened to the neckband of the shirt by purpose-made studs.
The origins may lie in practicality, but the detachable collar quickly became adopted as a mark of formal wear. There are still a few formal applications – barristers in the UK and Canada have to wear them in court, for instance, and Eton College students still use them.
But the general demand for detachable collars has been declining since World War II, and for good reason – detachable collars can be awkward to put on without help and the unyielding stiffness means that many find them uncomfortable to wear. The indelible association with unwarranted privilege and times now past has also condemned this style in the eyes of many.