Serendipity; or a conundrum resolved

 Amongst others one of the sartorial things I like is a detachable collar. 

Aficionados of the detachable collar these days tend to the stiff variety, disparaging anything not loaded with starch as little better than the attached variety.

Now n a blog dedicated to things synthetic this presents a problem because the collars intended to take a good stiffening to cardboard consistency are invariably of bonded cotton and linen.  Indeed for a proper shiny finish linen is considered indispensable.

So here's the conundrum: how to find a detachable collar that meets the criteria of synthetic?

 A nylon detachable collar might at best be considered semi-stiff because it is not constructed to take the starch and isn't really suited to the hot ironing with which the starch is set.

I have starched a nylon shirt, applying spray starch to the collar, cuffs and breast pockets of a uniform shirt.  But that's far from being the same thing.

The only nylon detachable collars that I have found came with 2 mail-order shirts by Holroyd and Cooper, shirtmakers of Whitworth Street, Manchester.  The subject of this 2005 Yahoo Groups post and this photoset on my old site.

 They are of the same striped fabric as the body of the shirt and thus look quite strange worn with any other tunic shirt — although I have done so on occasion.

As an alternative there were celluloid collars and imitations of the same in acetate from certain American re-enactment costumiers.  Alas I've so far failed to persuade them to respect my credit card!

And then there is plastic.

Some years ago I bought two plastic "wipe clean" waiter's wing collars which are fine but the style is of limited use.

Today, entirely by chance I got very lucky indeed.

I bought a Van Heusen nylon tunic shirt and the seller had included two detachable collars.

To my utter delight they turned out to be plastic.

Bond Street, the modern semi-stiff collar

As it says both on the packet and embossed inside the collar itself.

So now I have 2 wipe clean, satisfyingly synthetic, detachable collars to wear with my tunic shirts.

Leaving now a desire for something rather stiffer.






So, down the side here are some photos — in what has become the traditional manner — showing the surprise finds from packet to body.  I'm not sure what a blog visitor can do with the pictures:  I've uploaded them in versions large enough to see the weave of the fabric in many cases, but set them small to display reasonably without overwhelming the page. So please let me know if you can or cannot access the large versions for viewing.

Wardrobe

Method and order.

I'm afraid that I'm not very good at it, but sometimes I manage to form some sort of organisational habit and that's what's happened here.

Top left, ties and shirts for the office.

Bottom left, uniform shirts - daily wear when not at the office, and occasionally when I am if there's manual labour to be done.

Bottom right:  dress shirts, dinner shirts and tunic shirts.

The rest I suppose are "other", pretty shirts for occasions, odd ones, dressing up ones, and simply ordinary ones that occasionally get selected for work.

The method is: clean laundry gets put away on the left-hand end of a rail.  Shirts are selected, and this applies most to office wear, from the right.  I may just take the next available or I may pass over one or several for a variety of reasons.  That results in unfavoured shirts accumulating to the right-hand end of the rail and from time to time it dawns on me that I should put them back amongst the "others".

It is perhaps a little perverse to have a lot of shirts and only regularly use a small sub-set.  But it works for me because one of the aims is that in going out I'm never quite in the same outfit twice.

Oh, it hardly needs to be said but with a few oddities marked terylene or polyester by far the majority are nylon and all are synthetic.

Life through net curtains

There's a view, predominantly a middle class one, that net curtains are to be despised.  In my youth I heard people who had put them up in windows facing the street regret the "necessity".  It is something I absorbed with the culture but I have finally freed myself from the prejudice.

Fitting out a new home some degree of privacy protection has been at the fore of my mind and with windows both back and front for strangers to look through I have taken to net curtains like a synthetic pervert.

It's been educational.  I have, for instance, learned that what mother called nets were - or at least are in today's marketing speak - voiles: the first net curtains I had at the last place were just that, net, and rather unsatisfactory.  I like plain - which can be tiresome at time when only patterned or lacy affairs seem to be on offer.  Triple gather isn't quite as privacy-giving opaque as the sellers imply.

Still, front and back are now curtained; the living room and dining room in new, quintuple gathered, bright white, polyester voiles; as will the remaining windows of the house be when the budget allows replacement of the older, reused ones.

They may not really be nylon (were "nylon nets" ever so?) but they feel right, as I remember from years ago.  And if you need to think about why the feel might be important...   Oh, I shan't explain.

Next I shall experiment with hanging them as internal partitions.