EVOLUTION OF THE COLLAR.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1503, 27 July 1912, Page 11

EVOLUTION OF THE COLLAR.

COMFOKT-LOVING MEN. The fine weather has brought with it a new development in tho now constant process of relaxation in men's dress, writes the correspondent of a London paper. , "The new 'polo collar' is the final step taken in the reaction against the stiffness of the Mid-Victorian age. The Peter Pan collar i9> a name that describes it better. It Is made of soft linen or silk, with two long points flapping out from the safety-pin that holds them together. Its effect is to lend to tho most roughly hewn face an expression of quite childlike ingenuousness. . . "Tho polo collar hap been seen at eleven aq} Japira ;toj?S P«°a ut Suuuoui -eq} ni red and bjue ribbon of tho Guards'

Brigade, and twenty-three specimens were marked in a walk along '"The High" at Oxford during Eights Week. .• "The evolution of this collar is a register of tho growth of a tendency that is noticeable in every part of men's dress. Ten years ago the single, stiff stand-iip collar was absolutely indispensable to selfrespect in town. Tho double collar was the first concession made to comfort. It was gradually reduced in height to the narrow one-inch 'golf collar, which may even be coloured. The soft double collar was tho next step. The- Peter Pan collar which has succeeded it may in turn prove to be the introduction-of mufflers as the neck-dress of the well-dressed man. Soft shirts, too, have ousted the old method of starched linen. The top hatjias become almost a sacramental garment, reserved for weddings, funerals, and Sunday morning service, The frock-coat is now mainly remembered as a Victorian mode in the cutting Tooms of Savile'ftpw In fact, the well-dressed young man of to-day, as he walks across the Green Park -jacketed, soft-shirted, limp-collared: straw-hatted, and brown-shoed—is a figure of such ease as his high-stocked, frockcoated, corsetted grandfather would have termed disgraceful slovenliness."