Content area
Full text
Detachable collars, essential to men's appearance from the 184Os to the 1920s, have left a lasting legacy: the term 'white collar' and the "Arrow Man," the centerpiece of Arrow collar advertisements from 1907 until 1931. The Arrow Man was the visual representation of the "New Man," and Arrow collars were preserved in American culture through the lyrics of a 1934 Cole Porter song, "You're the Top." Both the Arrow collar and the Arrow Man derived from business decisions that reflected emerging and changing American consumer tastes and markets, an expanding middle class, and shifts in culture, especially in new ideal images of manliness that were less class-based, contributing to Americans' impression that social distinctions were more blurred than in the past. The Arrow Man embodied in a single compelling image the resolution of social contradictions that persisted beneath the increased similarity of men of different backgrounds.
The detachable collar, so essential to men's dress from the 184Os to the 1920s, has faded from view, relegated to antique shops, costume museums, and old photographs. Yet it left a lasting legacy. In the 190Os, officials borrowed the name to designate new occupations - white-collar jobs-and later, the white-collar class.1 In 1907 Cluett, Peabody, and Company, Inc., a major collar manufacturer, made advertising history with its "Arrow Man," who was the centerpiece of advertisements for Arrow collars until 1931. Arrow collars became synonymous with detachable collars and their superiority was preserved in American culture in the lyrics of a 1934 Cole Porter song, "You're the Top (You're an Arrow Collar)." The Arrow Man, created by noted illustrator Joseph C. Leyendecker, was the male equivalent of the Gibson Girl and a visual representation of the "new man." The history of the rise and decline of the Arrow collar and the Arrow Man is in part a story of links between business decisions and shifting consumer tastes and markets. How market changes were related to changing social structure and culture, most especially to ideal images of manliness, in the volatile first decades of the twentieth century is the subject of this essay.
Collars and Gentlemen
Legend has it that the detachable collar was invented in 1827 by Hannah Lord Montague, wife of a businessman in Troy, New York, to...