Don’t Use Paper Clips as Collar Stays! A Plea

We had a good chat recently on the Style Girlfriend Slack recently about collar stays.

Yes, really.

Some or our stylists were for the metal magnet kind, some were against. But we all agreed that a crisp collar is a good thing.

Maybe that’s why, when I met a friend of a friend this week, my eyes kept drifting to his blue dress shirt’s neckline as we chatted. The shirt itself was pressed and clean, if a little worn-looking, but at his collar point I could see the outline of…well, what was it anyway?

Finally, my curiosity got the best of me, and with the cover of “inquisitive fashion blogger”(“Just searching for the straight facts, Jack”) (…okay, no I don’t really talk like that but I wish I could) protecting me, I asked.

“Sorry, what’s that in your collar?”

“Oh,” he looked down towards his shirt, then back at me and blushed a little. “It’s a paper clip. The collar was getting a little rumpled so…”

A paper clip. A PAPER CLIP.

What I was looking at was the now-permanent outline in his collar point of a 2-cent office supply jammed into the fabric of his dress shirt.

“But…but…” I grasped at the words while trying to recompose my face like a Rubik’s cube, so that all the friendly, smiling parts were facing towards him. I wanted to seem – to be – helpful, while avoiding coming off like a complete jerk.

“You know they make collar stays, right? Like, you can buy them?”

“Yeah, I just don’t really care about this shirt, so…I mean, I should probably just throw it away, huh?”

So much about this sentence created a traffic jam in my brain. He cared enough to want the collars pointy. But not enough to reach beyond arm’s length on his desk for wardrobe support? I suppose I should be glad he didn’t staple the collar to stay in place? Or use scotch tape in place of a tie?

Because, and I’ve said it before, it’s the little things, guys! Details matter. Details like collar stays instead of office supplies. Girls notice these things. Everyone notices these things.

“Yeah, you should probably toss it…” And thankfully, he promised to do just that, saying he’d throw away the shirt as soon as he got home that night.

I don’t make the news, folks; I just report it.