The button-down collar, in my opinion, is one of the most iconic pieces of the menswear history, like the little black dress was for women’s wear. The look itself is very classic and cemented into what is ‘men’s style’ or men’s style lexicon.
Something that I thought was beyond interesting was that the button-down collar was originally called a ‘polo collar’ and was worn only by polo players (largely in England in the late 19th century). Back then the collars were not fastened by buttons or anything, and due to this, when playing their game, the polo players would get flapped in the face by the collar. So, the button is considered kind of a “home remedy” that the players came up with to prevent the collar from smacking them in the face.
The brand Brooks Brothers were the first to notice this issue and actually starting selling collared shirts with buttons on them for the wider public. Brooks Brothers button-down shirts still say ‘The Original Polo Shirt’ on the label today. Once being sold, this trend became the norm and the button down shirt eventually only came with buttoned collars.
Doing research on this, I came across an image that depicts the endless types of collars. It never came to me that there was this amount of range when it came to such a simple and small, yet important part of this garment! It was a refreshing type of information.
These days, designers love turning something simple into something complicated. The collar has been changed so many ways! In my opinion, it’s sometimes better just to stick to the basics sometimes and when it comes to shirt collars, “there’s nothing more fundamental than the good old button-down.”
Something I always think about is how this simple yet so classic piece is now a very fundamental item in women’s wardrobes too, like when the waist-shirt was created back in the late 1800s for the “Gibson girl”. Quite astonishing.
“The button-down is still the backbone of any self-respecting man’s wardrobe”
