Welcome back to the Gentleman's Gazette!
In today's video, we'll be discussing two different types of functional accessories
for your dress shirts.
Those being collar stays and shirt stays, as well as their uses and whether or not we
think you should wear them.
When it comes to men's dress shirts, there are a variety of accessories that can accompany
them.
Some are primarily decorative and fashionable such as cufflinks and collar bars, you can
find our articles and videos on those subjects here.
There are two such accessories, however, that are designed primarily for their functionality.
They're not outwardly seen when you're wearing them but their cumulative effect is making
sure that your dress shirt looks crisp and put together all day.
These two accessories, as we mentioned in the intro, are collar stays and shirt stays.
We will be discussing collar stays first.
Simply put, collar stays are small flat implements which are inserted into small corresponding
pockets on the underside of a dress shirt’s collar.
The purpose of collar stays is simple, to keep the collar firm and add attention around
the neck all day so that it properly frames your face as well as the knot of your necktie.
So why is this desirable?
Well simply put, because the purpose of a shirt's collar is to frame both the face and
the tie knot in a way that is geometrically pleasing especially in harmony with the whole
outfit, having a shirt collar that droops, sags, curls, or sticks out has the effect
of just looking sloppy and not properly put together.
While there are some styles of shirt collar that solved this problem in different ways
such as the tab collar or button-down collar or alternatively by wearing a collar bar or
collar pin, you could solve that problem by keeping the collar close to your neck in a
way that's both fashionable and functional, most typical dress shirts are going to benefit
best from the wearing of collar stays.
If you're curious about the various different styles of shirt collars in menswear, you can
check out our shirt style video guide here and also you can look at our corresponding
article on collar stays here.
Most collar stays are removable but you may occasionally find shirts with stays that are
permanently sewn into the collar.
In these cases, the stays are almost always made from a thin plastic and while they're
not immediately visible, the more you launder the shirt or especially dry clean it or have
it ironed, those plastic stays inside the collar will become more and more visible and
they'll eventually look unsightly over time.
There are a wide variety of collar stay styles on the market.
Depending on what you're looking for, you can find collar stays in various different
lengths, widths, shapes, and materials of construction.
As you might expect, choosing the correct collar stay in terms of dimensions simply
means picking one out that corresponds to the dimensions of the small pocket on the
underside of the shirt collar.
If you own several dress shirts in a similar style, you can, therefore, continue to use
the same pair of collar stays in all of those shirts thus maximizing your investment.
As an example, I own a good number of shirts from the British retailer Charles Tyrwhitt.
Because each of their shirts comes with its own complementary pair of collar stays, I
know that any stay I pick out from my stockpile will fit in any of the Tyrwhitt shirts that
I own.
It makes it easy when picking out collar stays.
Though the dimensions of your collar stays must be necessarily matched with the dimensions
of your shirt collar, when it comes to construction materials of the collar stays, that's really
more a matter of personal preference.
As such, here's a brief rundown of the most common construction materials for collar stays
that you'll find.
Perhaps obviously, plastic is the most common material used to make collar stays simply
because of its low manufacturing cost.
At the same time, you do get what you pay for.
While plastic collar stays may keep your collar looking crisp at first, plastic is easily
bent or warped and especially if you let your plastic stays go through the wash, through
the dryer, or under an iron, they'll break down quickly and your collar will end up looking
unsightly.
For that reason, over plastic collar stays, we recommend a more sturdy material such as
metal.
This brings us to our next material, stainless steel.
It's the most common metal used in the construction of collar stays and it's stiff and substantial
so your collar will be looking crisp all day long.
Cost varies depending on whether you just get simple plain stainless steel collar stays
or whether you opt for more customizable features such as engraving.
In which case, you would pay a little bit more.
Still, stainless steel collar stays are a great investment as they'll keep your collar
looking good and they'll last you a long time.
Another popular choice for metal collar stays is brass.
Functionally, brass collar stays are basically identical to stainless steel.
The only difference is they can have a slightly more distinguished appearance especially if
they happen to have a burnished finish.
Still, because you're the only person who's usually going to be seeing your collar stays
anyway, it's generally not worth any additional cost to opt for brass collar stays over stainless
steel ones.
In addition to brass and stainless steel, collar stays can also be made from more valuable
metals.
As you might imagine, collar stays made from gold or other precious metals are really more
of a statement piece than a practical consideration, especially considering how little anyone other
than you is really going to see them.
We would recommend that your money would be better spent on an accessory of a precious
metal that people will actually see.
On that note, we have a wide selection of collar bars and collar clips in our shop which
you can find here.
Magnetic collar stays exist as well.
Some manufacturers have begun constructing collar stays out of magnetic metals and selling
them as part of a package with small magnets which are then affixed under the points of
the shirt collar underneath the shirt to really keep the collar secured down.
While such an apparatus may ultimately keep the points of your collar down a little bit
more, it's our opinion that these types of magnetic collar stays approach the realm of
gadget wear.
Since ultimately, having a good fitting pair of stainless steel collar stays will provide
you enough of a crisp collar without having to worry about small magnets that might get
misplaced or fall off depending.
In addition to these materials, you can also find collar stays made from a wide variety
of more exotic substances.
For example, collar stays can also be made from horn or mother-of-pearl.
For the man who's thoroughly tired of his collection of metal stays, these materials
can be purchased from specialty retailers.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from luxury materials, you can also make yourself some
impromptu collar stays in a pinch if the need arises.
One option, for example, would be to cut up an old credit card or plastic gift card into
the shape of collar stay that's accepted by the collar that you're wearing.
A simpler and equally effective solution, however, is simply to take two moderately
sized paper clips and then use them just as you would your regular collar stays for the
duration of the day.
Using paper clips as collar stays is just one helpful hack that we mentioned in a recent
video.
You can check out that video here.
One more important note before you wash, dry, or iron your dress shirts or especially before
you send them to the dry cleaners, make sure to remove your collar stays from your collar.
Leaving them in during any sort of laundering will damage both the stays and the collar
lessening the life of both.
Speaking of ironing, we've already covered the topic of ironing a dress shirt properly
you can check out that video here.
Next let's talk about shirt stays.
As we've noted many times before on this channel, fit is of the utmost importance when it comes
to menswear.
You may have a closet that's full of clothing of the most luxurious materials but if it
doesn't fit you properly, you're still going to look sloppy and not put together whatever
you happen to be wearing, this is especially true for dress shirts.
If you're wearing a shirt that's cut too large for your frame, the excess fabric will come
up over waistband more and more throughout the day leaving you with an unsightly muffin
top around your waist.
More modern shirt styles are cut closer to the body and therefore, they have less excess
fabric but they're still going to come untucked if parts of the shirt aren't fitting you properly.
This constant process of having to re-tuck an improperly fitting shirt can really become
a nuisance quickly.
Obviously, the ideal solution would be to have a closet full of shirts that are made
or indeed custom tailored to suit your frame specifically, however, if you don't have the
budget for a closet full of custom shirts or just don't want to get rid of a few shirts
that you like but don't necessarily fit perfectly, a good temporary solution would be to use
shirt stays.
So what is a shirt stay?
Simply put, it's a device that uses elastic tension to keep your shirt tucked in and fitting
closely to your body all day.
The stay attaches to your shirt tails at the top and to either your socks or around your
feet at the bottom.
The constant tension between these points means that you'll be able to keep your shirt
tucked in no matter how much you move just using an occasional slight adjustment, not
a full re-tuck.
These accessories are fairly unknown in a lot of menswear circles but they do have a
long history with men in uniform, in particular, military personnel and law enforcement officials.
You may remember that we previously discussed shirt stays on our video about menswear gimmicks
that you don't need, you can check out that video here.
Our founder, Sven Raphael Schneider is decidedly not a fan of shirt stays as he believes them
to be uncomfortable and unnecessary.
We're discussing shirt stays today because of their place, appreciated or not, in menswear.
We're going to be ranking the styles that we believe would be better investments than
some others but overall, keep in mind that the best solution to keeping your shirts tucked
in is to simply buy dress shirts that fit you best in the first place.
With that said, there are a number of shirt stay varieties.
Each one basically does the same job but in a slightly different fashion.
The first type of stay we will discuss are straight style shirt stays.
These are the most common and cheapest construction of shirt stay styles available and you'll
usually see them in packs of four.
The biggest disadvantage to straight style shirt stays is their numerous connection points.
With up to eight clips on the body at any given time, there's a great likelihood that
one of these clips may fail or come undone especially if the shirt stays you're wearing
happen to be of low build quality.
Not only is a detached or broken clip a nuisance but if the particular shirt stay was under
enough tension, there's also a good chance that that loose clip could spring up and snap
you in let's say a sensitive area.
Overall, we recommend that you stay clear of Straight style shirt stays in favor of
some of the other options on this list.
Next, let's get into Y style shirt stays.
The Y style stay is constructed just how it sounds, with one clip for the socks and two
clips for the shirt creating the distinctive Y shape that gives it its name.
There are two big advantages of Y style stays over straight style.
The first is that there are fewer clips and ribbons to manage overall.
You've got just six clips in total instead of eight if you were wearing a set of four
straight stays.
The second advantage is that Y style stays pull excess fabric in on top of itself at
the sides of the shirt.
When combined with the military tuck style of shirt tucking, this hides and smoothes
excess fabric very efficiently.
At the same time, there are still drawbacks to this style of shirt stays.
As with the Straight style, you do get what you pay for and if you've got stays of a low
build quality, they will still degrade after a relatively short amount of time.
With that said, if you are going to consider wearing shirt stays, the Y style is a particularly
good choice.
Next let's talk about stirrup style shirt stays.
As the name would imply, these shirt stays have a stirrup or loop at the bottom through
which the foot is inserted.
This means that they only have clips where they attach to the shirttails.
While this minimization of clips does provide better security for the wearer overall, the
biggest downside of stirrup style stays is that they're much more visible to other people
especially when you're sitting down and they can also be more uncomfortable to you, the
wearer, because you've got a band of fabric surrounding your foot all day long.
For these reasons, they're best left to uniformed professionals who can sacrifice comfort for
utility.
Moving away from more classic garter style designs, the shirt stay belt revolutionizes
the concept in that it entirely replaces vertical tension with horizontal tension around the
waist.
After you put on your shirt, the belt which can be made from either elasticized fabric
featuring clips or from a simple piece of rubber, is worn around the waist and tightened.
The shirt stay belt in using horizontal tension doesn't directly combat the vertical movement
of your shirt coming untucked.
Also, it doesn't take advantage of the natural force of gravity in order to keep things secure
and they're also more likely to become visible above your waistband.
We don't recommend on the whole that you use belt style shirt stays.
Finally, as with collar stays, various companies have experimented with magnetic shirt stay
styles too.
In recent years, rubberized plastic hemispheres with magnetic backings have been sold as a
revolutionary new style of shirt stay technology.
While we, here the gentleman's Gazette, don't have any personal first-hand experience with
this style of shirt stays, reviews from other people in the menswear community have been
decidedly mixed as to their effectiveness.
So then here are our overall thoughts on shirt stays.
Speaking generally, shirt stays are an inexpensive and relatively effective way to keep your
dress shirts tucked in and snug against your body throughout the course of the day.
They do have their drawbacks, however, as lower build quality shirt stays models are
prone to failing after only a relatively short period of use and also they're often made
from bulkier and less comfortable materials than more premium styles of shirt stays which
do exist as well and may ultimately be a better investment.
Also, shirt stays may become more visible when you're seated and they are one more consideration
you have to take into account when dressing undressing and or using the restroom.
When considering just the staff here at the Gentleman's Gazette as a representative sample,
Raphael is definitely not a fan of shirt stays whereas I personally, have come to appreciate
them in certain scenarios.
At the end of the day though, our recommendation is this, shirt stays should just be seen as
a temporary style solution and the best course of action for any man is to invest in a Wardrobe
full of well tailored dress shirts that conform specifically to his frame.
In our view, collar stays are a must-have but your mileage may vary with shirt stays.
With that said, do you use either of these menswear accessories and if so, what are your
thoughts on and experiences with them?
Share with us in the comment section below and one additional reminder to subscribe to
the YouTube channel that way videos like this one will come straight to your inbox.
in today's video I'm wearing both collar stays and shirt stays though you can't obviously
see them in the finished outfit my shirt is from Charles Tyrwhitt and as such it accepts
the standard complementary brass collar stays which come with every Tyrwhitt shirt it's
mostly simple white but it features a subtle broken check in magenta and navy the wool
cardigan is also from Charles Tyrwhitt it's in a color that they describe as wine and
I wore it because it harmonizes with the magenta tones in the shirt my trousers are plain brown
but they're a warm brown so they also tie in with the different red tones that I'm wearing
today my socks are navy with a faint argyle pattern and of course they echo the Navy that's
featured in the as well as the tie finishing out the bottom half of the outfit I'm wearing
my dark oxblood penny loafers again they're an informal style which harmonizes with the
sweater and their red-brown color harmonizes with both the trousers as well as the sweater
the shirt and the tie speaking of the tie it's a vintage design in navy silk featuring
a subtle plaid pattern of both light blue and red finally I am wearing cufflinks today
but perhaps similarly to the color stays and shirt stays they aren't really meant to be
seen with the outfit as such I've got my cuffs oriented in a barrel style and they go well
with the small unobtrusive cufflinks that I've chosen to pull this off under the sleeves
of the sweater