I recently purchased these pamphlets showing celluloid collars. They show the available collar brand varieties of the Parsons & Parsons Company’s three sub-brands in a given year. I have been hunting through Newspapers.com trying to work out the year of these pamphlets. I have tentatively described them as post 1926 since I own one of the collars, a Par Brand, Amherst collar which has a 1926 patent date on it.
A recent eBay purchase of assorted starched linen military collars in an old box of a French brand of military collars. Sizes are in centimeters, and the names are in French and English. Most of the collars are straight bands and one is a curved band. This page has scans of the collars flattened out so you can use them to make your own straight or curved WWI military collars in these styles.
These are all band collars that button into the neck of a military tunic like this one seen on General Pershing c. 1918
It just forms a small edge in the interior collar, and meets in the front without buttoning closed.
1a Mako garant. 4 fach collar M 465 Uniform 40 36:
PDF of 1a Mako garant 4 fach collar M 465 Uniform 40 36
You can use these patterns above to make replicas of this curved military collar.
1a. Qual. 4 Jacky Uniform 37:
PDF of 1a Qual 4 Jacky Uniform 37
You can use these patterns above to make replicas of this straight military collar.
ST 70 Armee 37:
You can use these patterns above to make replicas of this straight military collar.
17 Armee 45:
You can use these patterns above to make replicas of this straight military collar.
Celluloid collars provided a low maintenance, waterproof, alternative to starched linen collars, and were stronger than paper ones. Their high point seems to have been in the 1880s when they were new, but they still regularly sold through the 1920s. Celluloid collars are given to cracking, especially after they age, so this one can’t be flattened and scanned for a pattern. However, you can use a bleach bottle and a pattern from a linen collar to make a replica that is stronger than celluloid, washable, and cheap.
Students from the DVC Beginning Costume Design Class Sp2018 make plastic collars using bleach bottles:
This catalog of Men’s and Women’s Tailored Garments would have been published about 6 months after the US joined World War II in December 1941. It is the sort of thing a store would keep on hand as a guide for ordering semi-custom made garments, even though with rationing on wool being rather severe, the trade in civilian garments would have been considerably curtailed. Therefore, unlike pre-war catalogs of similar type, there are pages of officer uniforms and women’s work wear suits shown as options. This type of catalog was usually used to order suits that were 90% mass manufactured, that were later finished to size on the cuffs of jackets and hems of trousers at the store where they were purchased after a fitting on the wearer.
Interestingly, the color images appear to all be printed using only 3 colors of ink: black, bright red and deep blue, which are cleverly used to create the browns, grays and dark blues of the woolen styles. This makes for all the pops of color having a patriotic flavor, as well as ties in with the theme of “All American Styles!” which is featured in the catalog text and illustrations. It also likely saved on ink, which would be viewed as both patriotic and practical.
Catalog of Men’s Tailoring Styles of 1923:
