The man who made button-down shirt collars a must
“Life is really simple,” said Confucius, “but we insist on making it complicated.” Case in point: men’s shirt collars. They’re now available in a bewildering variety of styles: cutaway, point, tabbed, club and spread.
“Men’s shirt collars have undergone a revolution,” businessinsider.com affirmed last year.
But for the casual, maybe preppy look, there’s always the old button-down standby — arguably the least formal collar, an excellent choice for the man looking to leave the tie behind.
“Right up there with the navy blazer, blue jeans and penny loafers, the button-down shirt is one of those all-important pieces that remain a cornerstone of American style,” GQ magazine declared in 2013.
As far as Elliot Gantmacher was concerned, those wee buttons fastening the collar to the shirt were equally at home on Madison Avenue and at the tennis club.
Elliot, who died in Boston on March 12 at age 89, and his late brother, Martin, didn’t invent the buttondown collar. But through marketing wizardry, starting in the late1940s, they made it a must for any man’s wardrobe.
The roots of the button-down collar lie in the polo fields of England, where in1896, John E. Brooks of the Brooks Brothers company was watching a match. Players were required to wear traditional dress shirts, and to prevent their collars from flapping up, they fastened them down them with buttons, so the story goes.
Back stateside, Brooks’s company began making “polo collar” shirts.
Soon after, another set of brothers came along. The Gantmachers’ father, Bernard, had co-founded the Par-Ex Shirt Co., which manufactured shirts for Brooks Brothers and other stores.
Born in Brooklyn, Elliot majored in marketing, and in the late ’40s he and his brother persuaded their father to introduce innovations in shirt-making.
Building on the button-down collar, they added the box pleat in the back to allow more freedom of movement, the extra button on the back of the collar to keep the tie in place, and the button tab that connects under the necktie to push the knot up and out. That last one was patented.
In 1949, the company was rebranded Gant, which the brothers adopted as their surname. The Ivy League cachet may have resulted from the relocation of the company near Yale University’s campus.
Though more popular in the U.S. and Europe than here, the button-down was “quite a big deal and still is today,” said Rikky Khanna, president and creative director of Mississauga-based Spier & Mackay, makers of custom shirts.
The button-down “works well in casual office environments as well as a fully casual shirt,” Khanna said. “Dress it up with a tie and sport coat or dress it down with jeans or shorts — it crosses over seamlessly.”
The Gant brothers also devised that little loop on the back of the shirt so hanging it won’t deform the collar. Which leads to another story: back in the day, a young man would remove it from his shirt to signal that he had a steady girl.