Two questions on shirt collar construction

[Tucker Peterson]

1. What determines the size of a shirt collar? The reason I ask is that I have some shirts that don't fit (too large) and I'm wondering if I can get white collars put on, and made to be smaller? Or am I just better off buying new shirts that actually fit?

2. A pair of shirts I have (MTM by Astor & Black--never again), the collars (and cuffs) feel incredibly stiff, like they're lined with plastic. Is it possible to have new interlining (is that the right terminology) inserted? Or am I, again, better off just buying a well-made bespoken shirt?

Tucker

[storeynicholas]

1. RTW shirts come in collar sizes - in the UK it's in inches and half inches - so a size 16 collar means that your neck is 16" around. If it's just the collar that is the problem, you might be able to get the shirt made into a neckband shirt - that is to say collarless with stud holes front and back. If it is altered to your size - in the UK you would then buy a soft separate collar in a regular size 0.5 of an inch larger (to accommodate the inner shirt band as well as your neck) from a shirtmaker. Overall, I should get a local seamstress to assess the situation.
Better off next time getting shirts that fit - is true!

2. The same solution goes here and the same agreement! Replacing interlining sounds rather fiddly and expensive.
NJS

[Costi]

1 - The body of a shirt can be recut to acommodate a larger collar, but not a smaller one. Therefore the only solution is the one suggested by NIcholas.
2 - If the interlining is glued, the answer is NO. If it is a floating interlining, it can be done, but unstitching the entire collar and taking it apart is more time-consuming than making a new collar, so don't expect it will cost you a triffle.

[storeynicholas]

I've just been out mending a water pump because, without it drawing up water from the well, we don't have any. I wasn't taught how to do this at school but I was taught a little wood and metal work and given a sense of how things are constructed and operate. In my day, girls were taught (normally at home) a little needlecraft ("to cut and sew - be neat in everything"). 40 years ago, most mothers, wives, sisters and daughters could have helped you out here with these collars - but, alas! no more! This is not the time for another rant about the state of the world but, to my mind, it is regrettable that a little craft isn't taught, as a matter of course to all youngsters: instead most people have to Google a man with a van (who did a crash course in pump maintenance for 6 weeks) to come around and declaim "Ooh!! I don't like the look of that" and get out a form for the sale and delivery of a new pump - sometime in the New Year. Moreover, if crafts were taught instead of whatever has replaced them (computing I suppose), there might be youngsters who could discover, early on, that, although they are not top of the class at maths, they can actually make a fine table or a box or a metal dish and that, just because they will never be able to construe the Institutes of Justinian, they need not be seen as losers but, as it is:

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

I cannot help feeling that, in the neglect of crafts as part of the learning process, the world is poorer. A hundred years ago, the fine pieces of furniture which Michael Alden is bespeaking, would have been available across Europe and America (and I am sure many other places too). The result of all this neglect is that many crafts are being lost - not just in the making and maintenance of clothes but across the board; children are missing opportunities to excel in a particular field, where complex maths has no place and where the consumers no longer know their bottoms from their elbows in judging workmanship - and so we have - and put up with - unseasoned house timbers, stapled together and many clothes which, 50 years ago, would have been declined - let alone disdained. But , sadly, there is not going to be any wake up call. More's the pity.
NJS[/i]

[rjman]

I've just been out mending a water pump because, without it drawing up water from the well, we don't have any. I wasn't taught how to do this at school but I was taught a little wood and metal work and given a sense of how things are constructed and operate. In my day, girls were taught (normally at home) a little needlecraft ("to cut and sew - be neat in everything"). 40 years ago, most mothers, wives, sisters and daughters could have helped you out here with these collars - but, alas! no more! This is not the time for another rant about the state of the world but, to my mind, it is regrettable that a little craft isn't taught, as a matter of course to all youngsters: instead most people have to Google a man with a van (who did a crash course in pump maintenance for 6 weeks) to come around and declaim "Ooh!! I don't like the look of that" and get out a form for the sale and delivery of a new pump - sometime in the New Year. Moreover, if crafts were taught instead of whatever has replaced them (computing I suppose), there might be youngsters who could discover, early on, that, although they are not top of the class at maths, they can actually make a fine table or a box or a metal dish and that, just because they will never be able to construe the Institutes of Justinian, they need not be seen as losers but, as it is:

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

I cannot help feeling that, in the neglect of crafts as part of the learning process, the world is poorer. A hundred years ago, the fine pieces of furniture which Michael Alden is bespeaking, would have been available across Europe and America (and I am sure many other places too). The result of all this neglect is that many crafts are being lost - not just in the making and maintenance of clothes but across the board; children are missing opportunities to excel in a particular field, where complex maths has no place and where the consumers no longer know their bottoms from their elbows in judging workmanship - and so we have - and put up with - unseasoned house timbers, stapled together and many clothes which, 50 years ago, would have been declined - let alone disdained. But , sadly, there is not going to be any wake up call. More's the pity.
NJS[/i]

The age of the Renaissance Man is over... we have entered Kali Yaga.

[storeynicholas]

I think that you are right but, like a spluttering, damp squib, I just fire off my final volleys... although I don't denigrate everything in the modern age - after all, conversations such as this could not easily have happened 50 years ago.
NJS

[Costi]

NJS, while agree that the loss of many crafts is a pity and that most people used to be able to do some simple things (some sewing, or carpentry, not to mention COOKING!!!), there certainly were limits to what they could do without resorting to a professional. For instance, it was common practice to turn around shirt collars when they became worn, giving the shirt a second life: it was a simple matter of unstitching the collar band from the body, flipping it and re-attaching it with a hand or machine stitch. Actually a sewing machine could be found in most homes - now they are museum pieces on display in MTM clothing shop windows. However, I would argue that taking a shirt collar apart and making it up again was never an operation that could be performed by a housewife and would have required a professional hand.