The Peter Pan collar: a flat, round-cornered collar without a stand, popular for women’s and children’s clothing in the early- and mid-20th century. The rounded Peter Pan collars are generally but not always worn without ties or bows (Wikipedia). Peter Pan collars were super- duper fashionable in 1960s, and now...
they're back!
Now some of you may be asking, "But oh wise and all-knowing one, what makes a Peter Pan collar better than other types of shirt collars?"
- The rounded edges of a Peter Pan collar are gentle, adorable, and look much more feminine than pointed collars.
- A shirt or dress with a Peter Pan collar is normally modest, since the collar hugs the neck, not leaving room for display of skanky boob-festivities.
The name is a reference to Peter Pan, a fictional (I'm still unconvinced) character who lives in Neverland (not the Michael Jackson one). The story is a fairytale (disputable. More likely real life) about a boy who never grows up. The Peter Pan collar is intended to evoke the same fairytale sense of eternal youth.
The costume that launched the trend was designed way back in 1905, for the first American stage production of J.M. Barrie’s play. Maude Adams, the Broadway star who played Peter, wore britches, a feathered cap, and a forest-y looking blouse with a white, rounded collar—wider than the collars that are oh so popular today, but otherwise quite similar. The collar was unique to this production; it hadn’t appeared in the 1904 London production. Nor was it mentioned in the text of the play itself, where Peter is dressed far more whimsically, in “autumn leaves and cobwebs”. We all know autumn leaves and cobwebs went out of style ages ago.
Later on in the century, the design became very popular for school uniforms, but not the creepy fetish kind. After the uniform trend, the collars became more of a mainstream trend, fluctuating in and out of style, depending on if it felt like being popular or not.
Those sassy collars.
Always remember, stay fly.
No comments:
Post a Comment