Plackets, stands, yokes and collars
Comments: 7
I learned two new words from this article in the NYTimes by David Colman: placket and stand. The placket of a shirt is the extra fabric (crucial, apparently, to crispness of collar) that runs down the button line* while the stand is the upright band of fabric between the yoke of the shirt and the collar itself.
The article talks about what it takes to keep a tie-less collar looking fresh and uncrumpled.
When you left the house, you looked great, your new striped dress shirt crisp, your spirits flying, freed from the yoke of a necktie. Come dinnertime, your collar looks a lot like your energy level: bedraggled and squashed like a popped balloon on pavement. Optimistically, you prop it up between the lapels, hoping it will stay just so for the rest of the night. If only.
This is interesting because I don’t think anyone who isn’t looking a little crumpled by the end of the day is to be entirely trusted.
Collarly crispness is a morning phenomenon that wilts with the craning of necks as we strain to hear over cubicles, the cocking of heads when we pretend to be giving thoughtful consideration to outlandish proposals from colleagues, and those little shoulder rolls and neck stretches we lapse into when life at the keyboard begins to shut off circulation to the brain.
A crumpled collar is an index of engagement and presence (no matter how feined) and anyone still crisp by mid-afternoon arouses suspicion: you get the feeling he just isn’t trying hard enough.
After work, it’s always better to have cocktails with people who look like they need them, and all that should be crisp at this point of the day is the wit and the gin.
But learning new words is always fun and I’ll forgive the fear of crumpling in return for placket and stand. In Underworld Don DeLillo has a sequence early in the book where the main character, a child at this point, is being given a talking to by one of the priests at the Jesuit school he attends. The priest begins to question the child about a shoe, asking him what the individual pieces of it are called. He names what must be every component piece of a shoe, and the sequence is fascinating not just because you imagine DeLillo finding a cobbler and taking notes but because, well, you get to learn all of the individual pieces of a shoe.
The priest’s point is that an ability to look beyond placeholder concepts, to perceive a greater granularity, will contribute to success in life. One wonders these days, sadly, if crispness of collar might not be a greater factor.
* In an essay called “Leading with the Grumper” Nicholson Baker mentions the word gig-line which describes the neat and vertical alignment of jacket and shirt buttons, belt buckle, and trouser fly. I’m frequently ungigged by the time I get to the station in the morning.
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Posted to General Rants • 2004.11.13 (Sat) • 01:09
Comments
Posted by Christopher Holland 2004.11.13, 04:23
Gig line is a term used by the military (at least the US Marines). If you ever have to experience an inspection you will find out that they seem to like to have the gig line straight and lined up. They tend to get upset about such things. Zany guys.
Posted by Mary Beth 2004.11.13, 06:06
…anyone still crisp by mid-afternoon arouses suspicion: you get the feeling he just isn’t trying hard enough.
Oh go ahead and say it - you suspect he’s a total slacker. OR that his job is being a model.
After work, it’s always better to have cocktails with people who look like they need them, and all that should be crisp at this point of the day is the wit and the gin.
Right on!
Posted by Derek K. Miller 2004.11.13, 07:25
You wear shirts with collars to work? Wow.
Posted by splinter 2004.11.13, 14:26
I love this new Tieless phenonomen, I have not worn a tie to work for at least y years…
Yes I work in an office, I work in IT and don’t see the customer much so no real point
Posted by WillaNan 2004.11.14, 19:14
I’ve never heard placket for a shirt as you described it. The button slit at the neckline of a rugby shirt would be a placket, as well as the button slit on long sleeve shirts.
Another word for you: “armscye”: the hole in the body of a shirt to which the sleeve is shown. Also, “bodkin”: a device for threading elastic or cording through a casing or tube. “Dart”: a seam in a single piece of fabric that ends in a point, to shape the fabric for a bustline or other area.
Posted by Jeff 2004.11.19, 05:55
Now if I could just buy shirts that automatically stayed nice and neatly tucked into pants throughout the day…
Posted by Val 2005.10.10, 13:03
Jeff, you too can have precision in pants and shirts! They’re called “jumpsuits”… :o)
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