• KristellA
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    14 hours ago

    Not anymore, but when collars were first added to clothing it was for comfort. It was in the mid 1400s, and clergy wore really stiff tunics with high necks, so they started wearing collared shirts underneath them for comfort. Shirts were also exclusively undergarments at the time.

    After those came the big ruffly Elizabethan collars for wealth/status symbols, then detachable collars (shirts were still underwear!), and then WWI happened, and soldiers were issued soft shirts instead of stiff outer clothes as outerwear since it was more practical. That then leads us to the collared shirts of today because that preference came to civilian life from the war.