Collar Stays : A Basic Accessory

Let’s be honest: a man wearing a clean shirt with a crisp collar will look sharp and refined while another man wearing the same clean shirt but with a lifeless collar will just appear dowdy. It’s a simple fact that the main focus of a shirt’s good look is a collar that stays stiff and in place.

However getting a collar to stay where it is supposed to be isn’t as easy as it seems. Most collars will just start to droop after the shirt has been washed a couple of times, unless you buy a shirt that is really high-end. Obviously that is a problem for anyone who dislikes such a scruffy look. The answer lies in using collar stays.

Collar stays are known by many names such as collar bones, collar tabs, collar sticks and collar stiffeners. They are an ingenious little dress shirt accessory that are specifically designed with the aim of ensuring that collars stay upright and crisp, just the way they were intended to be.

Most dress shirts come with little pockets that allow the insertion of collar stays while some of the more expensive, high quality shirts may come with collar stays already inserted and ready to be used.

If your shirt doesn’t come with a collar stay, you can easily purchase a packet of collar stay from any store. You can get plastic ones which are the cheapest but it is recommended that you buy brass or stainless steel ones if you are really particular about the collar stay doing a good job.

This is because metal collar stays don’t bend, unlike plastic ones which are usually quite flimsy and bent very easily. Just remember that anytime you want to get your shirt either washed or ironed, that you remove any inserted collar stays.