Hot weather kilting in San Diego

[Stoff]

This is a major peeve of mine. I've never understood the American fascination with button-down collars, or why they were invented in the first place. It's not like there's anything special about the USA that causes our collars to flap wildly about if they aren't buttoned down. And in the rare instance where it would be an issue, it's usually nothing that a starched collar with a metal collar stay wouldn't fix. If it's just a matter of wanting to keep a collar flap straight and well-positioned, collar stays do the job just fine. Button-down collars just don't make any sense to me, yet it's difficult to find collared shirts without them.

I usually pass on shirts with button-down collars. But if for some reason I do end up with one (I do have a few), I just leave the collar flaps unbuttoned when I'm not wearing a tie. They only get buttoned if my shirt front is buttoned all the way up to the neck. The reason being, as your photo shows, the buttoned collar stands up oddly when the flaps are buttoned but the shirt front is not.

Button down collars where invented for polo players.

Here is a quote from a wiki article on dress shirts:

"Button-down collars, or "sport collars" have points fastened down by buttons on the front of the shirt. Introduced by Brooks Brothers in 1896, they were patterned after the shirts of polo players and were used exclusively on sports shirts until the 1950s in America. It is still considered a more sporting style, and, particularly outside America, traditionally dressed men still do not wear suits with this style of collar."

Here is a link to the article: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dress_shirt>

Stoff