<p>We can all agree that whatever use a poet might make of a collar, they cannot turn it into a metaphor of the interior. A collar is a thing of the outside – it peeks out of other pieces of clothing, a sweater or jumper, even a shawl or blazer, where it’s part of fashion etiquette to remain slightly visible. In that sense, it’s a bit like the neck, which has to remain above water or a blanket; in general, uncovered. It must be intuition that guides me to this thought, for it’s in the etymology of the word itself, the relationship between collar and neck – the word originated about nine hundred years ago, from ‘coler’, which derived from the Latin collare, meaning a band for the neck, a necklace. Collum, to which it is related, means ‘neck’, which, in turn, means ‘to turn’, for it’s the neck that allows the head to turn.</p>.<p>But one doesn’t need a collar to turn one’s head the way one needs a zip in the pants or a hole through the sleeves, for body parts to function. In that sense, the collar is like the appendix, almost unnecessary, like a vestigial organ. Why did it become integral to the upper body garment then? I’m thinking of a comparable non-essential thing in garments of the southern half of our body, pants, skirt, saree, dhoti, where there is something as inessential as a collar. I can’t think of any – the zip, pockets, the loops to hold the belt, even the hemline folded and stitched in to prevent fraying, all of these are necessary. They, and almost everything in the upper garment too – buttons to bring its two halves together, sleeves, and even elbow patches – are necessary for a shirt or top or blouse to hold. What is the collar doing there, serving no purpose, even though it has the odd make-believe form of the rooftop of a lighthouse?</p>.<p>Everything else in the garments we wear is a response to the human anatomical form, moulded by its structure and need to communicate bodily with the world; looseness here, tightness there, annotated by bones and gravity, everything except the collar, which, being the highest peak in anything we wear, besides the head garment, is formed by etiquette, by the relationship with the world, the outside. And because it is outside, it becomes a marker, a passport. Hence, its easy appropriation into the class system – the distinction between blue- and white-collar jobs, the sturdy blue collars of physical labour and the white shirts with collars protected by dirt-free offices of clerks and managers. But this is not a formulation that emerged in the West in the early 20th century.</p>.<p>Long before that, in 17th-century China, the standing collar was used by Qing dynasty officials and noblemen. This would come to be called the ‘Mandarin collar’ in European and American fashion, and the ‘Nehru collar’ in India, since it was adopted by Jawaharlal Nehru for the kind of formal and semi-formal jackets he wore. The connection between the collar and the outside remained – as did its association with an unarticulated class system. The aside about it would come to be dropped, to retain its respectability – that the idiom ‘holding by the collar’ would move from police and legal origin, of holding a suspect by their collar, to ‘collar the guest of honour’.</p>.<p>Collar is, therefore, not the synecdoche of part-for-the-whole, but a signifier. Take the tie or the bow-tie that owes its existence to the collar – without it, they would have no place to hang from. The round-necked tee, from which no tie can hang except like a noose, would come to be seen as something that belonged to sportsmen and the working class. Women could choose to wear blouses with collars if they so wished – the sharp ends would grow into dog ear-shaped collars, often embroidered, sometimes in a contrasting or complementary colour to the rest of the top. But men, poor men, like animals with collars to keep them on a leash. Hilarious it is then, this forged relation between the collar, class, and gender (for women were exempted from this rule), that colonial club protocol would come to demand the collar and the tie as passports for entry.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is an author and poet. Her books include How I Became a Tree and Provincials.)</em></p>.<p>(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)</p>
<p>We can all agree that whatever use a poet might make of a collar, they cannot turn it into a metaphor of the interior. A collar is a thing of the outside – it peeks out of other pieces of clothing, a sweater or jumper, even a shawl or blazer, where it’s part of fashion etiquette to remain slightly visible. In that sense, it’s a bit like the neck, which has to remain above water or a blanket; in general, uncovered. It must be intuition that guides me to this thought, for it’s in the etymology of the word itself, the relationship between collar and neck – the word originated about nine hundred years ago, from ‘coler’, which derived from the Latin collare, meaning a band for the neck, a necklace. Collum, to which it is related, means ‘neck’, which, in turn, means ‘to turn’, for it’s the neck that allows the head to turn.</p>.<p>But one doesn’t need a collar to turn one’s head the way one needs a zip in the pants or a hole through the sleeves, for body parts to function. In that sense, the collar is like the appendix, almost unnecessary, like a vestigial organ. Why did it become integral to the upper body garment then? I’m thinking of a comparable non-essential thing in garments of the southern half of our body, pants, skirt, saree, dhoti, where there is something as inessential as a collar. I can’t think of any – the zip, pockets, the loops to hold the belt, even the hemline folded and stitched in to prevent fraying, all of these are necessary. They, and almost everything in the upper garment too – buttons to bring its two halves together, sleeves, and even elbow patches – are necessary for a shirt or top or blouse to hold. What is the collar doing there, serving no purpose, even though it has the odd make-believe form of the rooftop of a lighthouse?</p>.<p>Everything else in the garments we wear is a response to the human anatomical form, moulded by its structure and need to communicate bodily with the world; looseness here, tightness there, annotated by bones and gravity, everything except the collar, which, being the highest peak in anything we wear, besides the head garment, is formed by etiquette, by the relationship with the world, the outside. And because it is outside, it becomes a marker, a passport. Hence, its easy appropriation into the class system – the distinction between blue- and white-collar jobs, the sturdy blue collars of physical labour and the white shirts with collars protected by dirt-free offices of clerks and managers. But this is not a formulation that emerged in the West in the early 20th century.</p>.<p>Long before that, in 17th-century China, the standing collar was used by Qing dynasty officials and noblemen. This would come to be called the ‘Mandarin collar’ in European and American fashion, and the ‘Nehru collar’ in India, since it was adopted by Jawaharlal Nehru for the kind of formal and semi-formal jackets he wore. The connection between the collar and the outside remained – as did its association with an unarticulated class system. The aside about it would come to be dropped, to retain its respectability – that the idiom ‘holding by the collar’ would move from police and legal origin, of holding a suspect by their collar, to ‘collar the guest of honour’.</p>.<p>Collar is, therefore, not the synecdoche of part-for-the-whole, but a signifier. Take the tie or the bow-tie that owes its existence to the collar – without it, they would have no place to hang from. The round-necked tee, from which no tie can hang except like a noose, would come to be seen as something that belonged to sportsmen and the working class. Women could choose to wear blouses with collars if they so wished – the sharp ends would grow into dog ear-shaped collars, often embroidered, sometimes in a contrasting or complementary colour to the rest of the top. But men, poor men, like animals with collars to keep them on a leash. Hilarious it is then, this forged relation between the collar, class, and gender (for women were exempted from this rule), that colonial club protocol would come to demand the collar and the tie as passports for entry.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is an author and poet. Her books include How I Became a Tree and Provincials.)</em></p>.<p>(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)</p>
