All right, gentlemen.
Let's talk about a problem.
So, you go out there and you buy a beautiful shirt.
Maybe you find it on sale maybe you spend a little bit more, maybe you get something
custom-made.
You've got big plans for the shirt.
You want to wear it out at night, you want to wear it without a tie and you want to look
great.
So, you get the shirt, get it at home get it delivered.
You put it on, put on your sports jacket and you look at yourself in the mirror and guess
what?
Ah, it is a limpy falling over itself weak collar.
Now, why does this matter?
Because the collar frames the face.
And, gents, if you're going to spend good money on a nice shirt and you want to see
you just want to look good.
So, how to get that perfect collar?
In today's video, I've got five tips on how to get the perfect looking collar when you
wear it without a tie.
Now, gents, like with all of my videos I support this with an article over at Real Men Real
Style.
Bo check out the article.
I go into a lot more detail there, I've got some charts for you.
I think you're going to enjoy it.
Now, let's get into it.
So, the five tips.
The first tip on how to get the perfect shirt collar actually has nothing to do with the
shirt collar.
What do I mean?
Actually, guys, it has to do with having a strong placket.
Now, when you go out there and you look at shirts, plackets aren't something most people
think about unless maybe you're going custom and you can design it.
But, a strong placket is the core is the center of your shirt and if you're going to be able
to wear a shirt without a tie, maybe have one, two, three buttons undone and for it
to look great, you've got to have a strong placket.
And, I know that there are, you know, all the other tips I'm going to talk about they're
important, but they're not as important as this one.
So, what's my advice?
To buy a shirt with a strong placket.
If you're going to get a custom-made, make sure maybe they've got it, you know, double
material reinforced.
This is going to be the key to making sure it looks great.
Unfortunately, most shirts out there have weak plackets.
Even shirts that you buy that have a strong placket at the beginning after maybe five
to ten washes starts to loosen up and all of a sudden they're not going to hold that
look.
Thank goodness, we have entrepreneurs.
As you guys know I love businesses that solve our problem.
I want you guys to go check out Million Dollar Collar.
I'm using their product right here.
Basically, what it does is they've tested this like little material that you sew into
your actual placket to reinforce it.
Guys, I have tested a lot of things and you guys know I get stuff sent to me all the time.
I was actually amazed at how well this work, relatively inexpensive.
Guys, again, go check out Million Dollar Collar.
I love it when entrepreneurs come in and solve our problem and that's what these guys have
done.
Tip number two is to choose a shirt with the right collar style.
So, if you have a strong placket, you can actually get away with a wide range of collar
style.
If you have weak placket, you're going to want to be careful.
There are only going to be certain styles that are going to work and basically the placket
that's weak is going to be able to support them.
So, you want to look at maybe more spread collars, collars with a shorter point.
There are two things to determine collar styles, it's going to be the spread and it's going
to be the point length.
In both of those, you're going to want to make sure it's something that isn't too close
together, so you want to be really careful of narrow point collars and you want to be
very careful of anything that is going to have a longer basically collar point length.
So, those two things you're going to want to minimize if you can imagine the placket
just simply can't hold that much weight.
Now, there is a way around it.
If you can find a shirt actually has a very maybe an attached collar or one and you can,
yes, take this to a seamstress and have her sew on a stronger collar.
There are ways they actually may be put a reinforcement in there, then it possibly can
stand up a bit better on its own, but, again, with a weak placket, it could start to fold
in on itself.
Really quick let's talk about the button down collar.
The button down collar is going to do a great job of actually keeping the points in place,
but it can still have them leaning to one side or the other so it's not truly going
to solve the problem.
The third tip I want to give you is look for collars with collar stays.
What are collar stays?
Basically, guys, they are the bones underneath here.
So, I'm going to pull this one out right here, this is a collar stay.
You need to make sure when you're looking to buy a shirt that it has a place basically
to be able to put this and then it's actually going to work properly.
Now, if you have a shirt that you already love and you it doesn't have pockets for collar
stay, you can possibly get those sewn in.
Now, guys, I cover collar stays and I talk about magnetic collar stays and a lot of other
things in this video right here, so you can go check that out.
So, tip number four.
Use starch.
What you want to do is starch the front right over here in the placket.
Go ahead and starch the collar.
Starch is a temporary stiffener.
This is actually going to keep it in place.
Now, notice I said temporary because the problem with starch is after a few hours, it's going
to basically it's going to stop having its effectiveness.
Also, it can irritate the skin and in some cases if overused and if used for too many
times, it can start to damage the shirt.
However, it's a very inexpensive and very quick way to fix the problem.
Tip number five.
Button placement and fastening.
So, the rule here is the more buttons that you leave undone, the more likelihood the
collar is going to basically fold in on itself.
So, one way is to actually button it up a bit more and actually see if that can better
support the collar.
The other thing is if you're going to get a shirt custom-made, perhaps you actually
want to talk with a tailor and say, okay, I want to have a little bit maybe less room
between there.
Oftentimes, the differ the distance between the second and the first button can be shortened
and therefore it's going to hang a little bit better.
Guys, I covered a lot of tips in this video.
I want to reiterate though number one, make sure you get a strong placket.
I want you to go check out Million Dollar Collar.
Like I said, guys, I've tested their product.
I love supporting entrepreneurs that come in and basically solve our problems and that's
what these guys have done and good luck.
I would love to hear from you, guys down below what you think about Million Dollar Collar,
what your tips are for basically getting the perfect looking shirt collar.
And, that's it, guys.
I'll see you in the next video.