The 5 Second Tip for Your Dress Shirts

I’m sure many of you either spend your hard-earned money dry cleaning your everyday work dress shirts or your go-to date night dress shirts. Or perhaps you spend some time perfecting your art of ironing. Either way, there’s one easy way to add the finishing touch to any dress shirt.

 

Accessories for men often include the all-important wristwatch, the leather belt with the worn out 3rd notch, and the George Costanza wallet you’ve had since graduating college. You might occasionally even wear a tie clip, cuff links, or a money clip for your Benjamins. But one often overlooked accessory which is just as important if not more, people don’t even see…the collar stay.

These essential tiny pieces of metal help your collars stay in place. Thus the name – collar stays. I’ve seen many a man, whether at a work setting or out on the town eating dinner with the collars of their nicely pressed dress shirt either curling up and out or down and in. Or worse, laying flat on their shoulders and chest. This look doesn’t help their shirts look sharp or crisp at all. Especially if they’re wearing a nice sports jacket. Collars tend to hide under the jacket as the night goes on.

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But one often overlooked accessory which is just as important if not more, people don’t even see…the collar stay.

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Plenty of dress shirts come with collar stays. Visit any mall and walk into the Banana Republic or go to your nearest Tanger Outlets to a Calvin Klein store and you’ll see the majority of dress shirts come with those lame, flimsy plastic collar stays. If you’ve never noticed them or don’t know what I’m talking about, just flip the collar and you’ll see those rounded out pieces of plastic tucked quietly in their home (collar stay pocket). The plastic ones are okay but like I said, they’re flimsy and break or bend easily which defeat the purpose of keeping your collars straight and upright.

These days, you can fire up the Amazon app on your new iPhone X (with nearly edge-to-edge screen real estate) and search for collar stays and you’ll get over 2,000 results. So there’s a ton of options for you. Collar stays are made of different materials, ranging from stainless steel (most common) to carbon fiber.  I typically go with a stainless steel set because they’re relatively inexpensive so if I lose a few, I won’t inadvertently reorganize my walk-in closet looking for them. Plus they’re quite durable. They’ll definitely out-live any dress shirt I currently have.

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Grab a couple of collar stays, slide them in, and be confident in knowing you look good.

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Here are a few tips on how to best use these puppies to up your dress shirt game:

1. Make sure you buy dress shirts with collar stay pockets. Don’t even bother getting ones that don’t unless you plan on duct taping the collar stays to the underside of your collar.
2. Grab a set of collar stays. Most of them will come with varying lengths which you’ll need because shockingly, all collars aren’t the same size.
3. Keep a few in your travel toiletries bag. Especially if you’re going on a work trip and you need to look your best to impress that client who holds the keys to your multi-million dollar, multi-year contract you’ve been working on for months.
4. Lastly, if you are in a bind, find something plastic you can easily cut into the shape of collar stays. There have definitely been a couple times when I’ve asked the front desk of my favorite hotel for a pair of scissors and chopped up my hotel room key card into make-shift collar stays.

Honestly, I think using collar stays is THE easiest and fastest way to drastically improve your look when wearing dress shirts. If you take the time, money, and energy to dry clean or iron your shirts, don’t stop there. Grab a couple of collar stays, slide them in, and be confident in knowing you look good.

Watch the video above, give it a thumbs up, follow me on Instagram, and you’ll be entered into a free giveaway drawing for a set of custom PaternalStyle stainless steel collar stays. They are shiny.